


Bōchord

by Sealie



Series: 'Uhane [15]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, There be nookie in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 06:44:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15285981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sealie/pseuds/Sealie
Summary: Danny loves a good murder-mystery. Steve? Not too sure. He prefers another genre.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: slash, M.  
> Warning: Milgram mentality, graphic violence, threat.  
> Spoilers: none  
> Notes:  
> 1\. Sentinel AU fusion with a different socio-political universe to canon – ‘Uhane verse.  
> 2\. British English spelling  
> 3\. Potty mouths abound  
> 4\. Reference to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, which I do recommend (but you don’t need to read it for this fic).  
> Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit (yes, I am old school).  
> Beta: The most brilliant Springwoof betaed this fic when she was poorly sick – thank you, Babe.

**Bōchord**

**Part one**

“Oh my--” Steve breathed. He reached down to touch. The hardback book lay on the floor where it had fallen from the victim’s hand.

“Hey. Hey. Hey! Gloves, this is a crime scene!” Danny yelled. “Haven’t I taught you anything? Fingerprints! We don’t want to convict you of a crime you didn’t commit!”

Steve held his hands up – wasn’t me – even as the book called to him. Face down, the pages were twisted. Steve’s grandfather would be turning in his grave. 

“Wear them.” Danny slapped a pair of gloves against Steve’s chest. 

Carefully, Steve pulled them on. Deliberately, he crouched down. Green paper cover, with gilt, embossed writing. 

_From Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne._

Holy Shit. 

“You said this guy was a professor. What of?” Steve asked. 

“Philosophy.” Danny played goofy thumbs over his little e-tablet. “Not many of those about. He’s… he was based at the Pan University here in Honolulu.” 

Reverently, Steve lifted the book. The smell of lignin reminded him of his grandfather and his love of books. Books always carefully stored in the room that had become Nahele’s bedroom. He had to find a safer place for them, rather than hiding them in plain sight. His grandfather would have given his left nut for this book. 

Steve made a careful sweep of the room. Likely, if the professor had this book then he had more science fiction squirrelled away. The bookcase across the far wall had many books, but a quick glance told him they were mostly text books. 

Professor Reeves had been sitting quietly in his living room, reading. Someone, unknown, had stood behind him, shot him in the back of the head, and left through the open doors onto the hanging basket-bedecked lanai. The doors were a complicated, sliding affair; they had to have been left open, otherwise Reeves would have heard his murderer. Simple, straightforward murder. The professor’s intern had come around to check on him in the afternoon when he hadn’t turned up for any morning lectures and, finally, an important lunch meeting with the dean. 

“What type of philosophy?” Steve folded the bent page back, but it was creased forever. 

“Epis… epis…?”

“Epistemology,” Steve supplied. 

“Which is?” Danny asked. 

“Study of Knowledge.” 

“How do you study knowledge? Knowledge is? I mean, I know stuff. I don’t know-know.” 

Before Danny could continue to expound, his train of thought was derailed by Max’s entrance toting his big box of equipment. Charlie Fong from forensics followed with his own case. 

“Is that?” Max leaned forwards, finger automatically pushing his glasses up his nose, to better see.

Steve did not hide the book behind his back. 

“The victim was reading it when he was shot,” Danny said. 

“Oh? Hmmm.” Max stood up straight. “And it wasn’t stolen?” 

“Apparently, since it was here.” Danny looked between Steve and Max, back and forth, realising that he was missing something. 

Steve wasn’t going to steal the book – he was a cop. It was part of the case, and, now since Max had explicitly brought the book to Danny’s attention, it was an identified part of the case. Albeit, it was, as Max pointed out, interesting that it had not been taken. 

“Perhaps, the perpetrator didn’t know it’s--” Value wasn’t the right word, although it was valuable in the right circles. Contraband? The book wasn’t contraband. Steve settled on, “Nature.” 

“What are you talking about?” Danny held his hand out expectantly for the book. His hands were gloved. Reluctantly, Steve handed it across. 

Danny ran his fingers over the green covered cloth as he examined the book, stroking the gilt. He scrunched his nose up at the illustration on the cover. 

“From Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne?” he said perplexed. “Went to the moon? Someone wrote about this?” 

He opened the cover and the back cracked – both Steve and Max winced. 

“Translated from the French by Louis Mercier, M.A. (Oxon) and Eleanor E. King. First American edition, 1874,” Danny read from the front page. “Oh, old. Worth something? If the perp didn’t steal it, we likely don’t have a perp killing the prof. for weird books. Geez, wasn’t this guy an adult? Why’s he reading fairy tales?” 

Absently, he handed it back to Steve. Max followed the movement of the book from one hand to the next.

“They’re not fairy tales,” Max said. “Fairy tales have their place in culture, many cultures. That is a work of speculative fiction of a specific type. Speculative fiction can encompass fairy tales…”

Danny had already tuned Max out and had returned to scoping out the scene. 

Steve slipped the book into an empty evidence bag. He fingered the bag tag. 

“What do we know?” Steve asked. “Next of kin?”

“Widower. Wife died of a stroke three years ago.” Chin stood on the edge of the scene, watching. “Outlived their son, died in 1998, surfing accident. No other relatives.” 

“Sad,” Danny summarised. “Known associates?” 

“Many. Studied in Paris. First postgraduate post in Budapest and then Prague. Gained a permanent lectureship back in France in the Pan University in Nice,” Chin said. “Moved here to the Hawaiian Pan University in 1994. Been a respected member of the faculty. Teaching undergraduates and postgraduates. Currently leads one Pan-directed project with multiple universities throughout Pan North. Just returned from London.”

“On?” Steve asked. 

“Acquisition of knowledge across cultures.” Chin flicked through his tablet. “Reading, traditional storytelling, lecture-structure, apprentices…. It’s just kicked off, they have had their first project meeting in London. The professor returned the day before yesterday.”

“Do we have a time of death?” Danny asked as the coroner extracted a liver thermometer from the corpse. 

Max regarded the display. “Between 3am and 4am.” 

The body was a void; no emotions emanated from dead bodies. Steve wasn’t much given to prayer, but he was thankful that he didn’t sense anything from dead bodies. 

“So he could have been jetlagged and was up reading when the perp broke in? Surprised by an unexpectedly awake victim, he shot him?” Danny proposed thinking out loud. 

“Surprised?” Steve watched Max assessing Reeves still slumped against the wing of his armchair. “He was shot in the back of his head.”

To be accurate he had lost the top of his head. The upholstery had soaked up most of the blood. 

“Was anything taken?” Chin asked. 

“No overt signs of stealing.” Danny had paced through the house, but he had said that the scent of the decaying blood had practically obliterated any other scent markers. “The shot came from the lanai windows behind him.” 

Danny pointed at a hole in the wall that was more than likely holding the spent round.

Steve would have never sat with his back to the doors. The armchair sat before a fireplace that would never have been used in equatorial Hawaii – cliché. 

“So our working theory is – perp enters, shoots, and leaves.” Chin grimaced. “This was a murder.” 

“We look for enemies.” Danny rubbed his hands together. “I’ll make another sweep of the place.” 

“Backyard, first,” Steve offered. He handed the bagged book off to Charlie Fong. “Since the body, when Max moves it….”

Danny wrinkled his nose. “Good point.”

Danny’s sense of smell was astoundingly acute, but it was also the sense that he went out of his way not to use if there was a dead body in close proximity--for a whole host of reasons. Making an abrupt about turn, Danny strutted out of the house. 

Steve waited a beat, and then followed. 

“What’s on your mind?” Danny asked as he paced over the grass, tracking footsteps that only he could see. 

The weather had been dry for over a week, and the grass was mown to stubble. 

“The case? All seems a little contrived,” Steve said.

“Contrived?” 

Steve shrugged. It wasn’t the right word. The house was only a framework of wood, masonry, and plaster with screws and nails. The person, and sadly the family, that made it a home were gone. There was nothing more to sense. 

“Plastic?” Steve tried, but that wasn’t correct. “Empty?”

“Plastic? Empty?” Danny considered, as he scrutinised the tracks. 

Emotions were hard, Steve thought. 

Danny took them through bushes, and the loamy soil beneath showed the clear impression of a size eight, flat-soled sneaker. Cognizant of his almost healed ankle, and not wanting to turn it, Steve walked carefully. Crouching, Danny marked two impressions by a rhododendron with a tag for Fong to record. Scanning, he found the next and then the next footprint. Danny marked each one. 

“Charlie will be able to figure out the perp’s height,” Steve said unnecessarily. 

“He vaulted the fence and then--” Danny pointed at the stumpy fence ahead, “--I’m guessing, he paused by the bushy bush, scoping out the house.” Danny waved back over his shoulder at the rhododendron. “And then crouching, judging by the spacing, he ran across the lawn.” 

Watching his feet, Steve headed over to the fence. Vaulting? He could have stepped over the fence. 

“So not a big person.” 

“Put his hand here.” Danny pointed at the white picket slat. 

“Definitely a man?” Steve asked. 

“I’m guessing.” Danny shrugged. “Based on the space between footsteps they’re not that tall, but they’ve got size eights. Big feet still growing?” 

“So, this was a kid?” Steve grimaced. 

“Sixteen? Fifteen?” 

“Not a university student, then?” Steve said.

“Kids and adults come in a variety of sizes,” Danny said precisely. “Could be one of the prof’s undergrads.” 

Danny wasn’t sensitive about his shorter than average height. Well, sensitive wasn’t the right word. He got annoyed that people harped on about it, because it shouldn’t be an issue whether or not he was as short as Beeley or as tall as Steve, since it had no impact on his role as a father, detective, or as a sentinel. 

Steve slung his long legs over the fence and then smirked smugly at Danny as he clambered over. 

“Gazelle legs,” Danny grumbled as he dropped onto the hard concrete of the sidewalk. 

“You like them when they’re wrapped around your hips.” 

An impish smirk crossed Danny’s face.

Steve grinned. 

“Animal,” Danny summarised, affectionately. “We’re at work: focus.” 

“True.” Hands on his waist, finger tapping his badge, Steve regarded the street. 

The summer heat had baked the sidewalk and road. High temperatures accelerated pheromone degradation. The houses on either side of the road were detached and many didn’t have fences. Only one house on the other side of Reeves’ property sported a high fence. Any perp could easily cut through lawns and gardens and move through the suburb. 

“HPD to canvas door-to-door?” Danny said, reading Steve’s mind. 

“It happened in the middle of the night. Maybe we’ll be lucky, get a night worker,” Steve said. 

“Might have someone with one of those new fandangled security video cameras,” Danny offered, as he bent over and inhaled mightily. 

“It’s not a rich area, it’s definitely comfortable--but it’s not rich,” Steve said. They had a local problem with Robin Hood thefts in the affluent districts. Steve couldn’t bring himself to care that much. They always found a more complex and political case to address when Hood slipped into a mansion and lifted cash and other disposable commodities.

“Bum,” Danny huffed, exasperated. 

“Bum?” Steve raised an eyebrow. 

“It’s a Rachel thing.” Danny ground his teeth. “A British-thing. It’s like saying ‘Damn it’ when you’re frustrated, and want to say ‘Fuck’ but there are kids in the room.” 

“There’s no kids here.” Steve made a point of scanning left and right, demonstrating no kids. 

“It’s an expression. I’m frustrated by the case. I have a toddler and a British ex-wife. Expect the occasional bum.” 

“And ass? No, arse.” Steve couldn’t help leering. 

“Give over,” Danny said with a horrible attempt at a Cockney accent.

~*~

A yawn caught Steve by surprise. The day had been curiously energy sapping. He scrubbed his hand over his face and concentrated anew on the monitors showing the evidence relating to the professor’s death. No enemies stood out. He had a semi-affectionate, long-standing disagreement over two opposing hypotheses with a colleague, but the man was based in Lisbon, Portugal. When Kono had contacted the researcher, his response to the news had been tears.

The professor was quiet, helpful, well-respected by his colleagues, and didn’t have many friends he met on a daily basis. His friends were spread throughout the world and his main mode of contact was email or instant messenger. 

What the professor was very good at, outside of his scope of study, was hiding his internet history. 

“Really?” Danny asked. “You realise that the guy was likely killed by a kid.” 

Steve grimaced. 

“No,” Toast, their computer wizard, hunched over the computer table, said, “that kind of activity leaves a _stain_ that is easy to find.”

“What does he do that makes him need to hide his -- I dunno -- footsteps?” Danny asked. 

“A couple of forums. They discuss texts. Science fiction. Fantasy.” 

“He’s an adult!” Danny said. “Is it for his research?” 

“I guess.” Straightening, Toast scratched at his measly beard. “You said he researched, what was it, knowledge?” 

“Isn’t his latest project about how information is shared?” Steve crossed his arms. “So, stories.”

“Stories?” Toast asked.

“That’s one way of sharing information -- teaching, telling stories. Magic, myth, meaning.” 

“Fairy tales,” Danny said dismissively. “You’ll be talking about little people next.” 

Steve should have taken a photo of Danny’s expression. Interesting, since Danny’s mom had told him that Danny had had invisible friends as a toddler. 

“This isn’t relevant.” Danny huffed, and puffed out his chest. “It’s -- I hope -- for his research. I mean he’s reading kid stories. Weirdo.”

“I remember enjoying the Jetsons when I was little before it got taken off the network.” Toast hummed.

“My dad liked that!” Danny shook his head. “So tacky. Perky music.”

“Anyway.” Steve snapped his fingers. “The case?” 

“I haven’t found anything on his computer that’s suspicious, other than a fondness for kids’ stories,” Toast said. 

“So why was he murdered?” Steve asked out loud. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, derailing any further thought. He needed to get one of those belt pouches like Danny, because that went right to his cock. Or he needed to programme a different alert. 

“PTA?” Danny asked hauling out his own phone. He must have also had it on silent. 

“Results of Nahele’s grade assessments. See what exam grades he can go for this year,” Steve said, reading the message. 

“Good news or bad news?” Toast asked. 

Steve growled. 

“Turns out,” Danny answered Toast’s question, “that while guides get an education on ‘Aina it’s… lacking. Guides only need reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

“No computing classes?” Toast inferred instantly, horrified. 

“Guide studies, a lot of guide studies, nursing, no physics, rudimentary chemistry and how it relates to sentinels,” Steve said. Nahele was struggling, and he had a lot on his plate. When he had first enrolled into Grace’s school, it had become rapidly apparent that he was woefully unprepared, and he had been shifted into remedial classes. 

“I’ll go,” Danny decided. “You’ve been on that ankle long enough. Pick up pizzas from Mamma Rosa’s and I’ll bring the kid home after school.” 

“My ankle is fine.” 

“The doctor said…” 

Steve had it strapped and reluctantly he had let Danny drive. The fight over the walking stick had been epic. Steve had won. 

Danny squared his shoulders preparing for battle. Steve didn’t need empathy; he largely kept it locked down during the day. Steve had a theory, which he hadn’t shared with Danny. Danny had a series of care-reservoirs and Danny’s _protect-Steve-reservoir_ had just topped over. George and Grace had maybe a thimbleful-sized reservoir between them – which meant it was emphatically not a large one, and when it overflowed it triggered an immediate protective response. Danny could, say, watch the toddler fall and leave him for maybe a second before rushing over. Steve figured his own reservoir contained about an eggcup’s worth of volume. 

How long it took for a reservoir to over-top was very variable. 

Steve weighed pros and cons before deciding to keep his battles for later. But he was Nahele’s guardian. 

“I--” Danny poked his own chest over his heart, “--am _experienced_ in talking to teachers. And Nahele will agree with everything that you say, but maybe he’ll tell me a little what he thinks.” 

Steve bristled. 

“No no no--” Danny’s finger waggled from side to side, “--that’s not a bad thing. The kid’s just got to get a little more confident. I’m working on that. You, however, are a big bowl of mush and will protect him, even from himself.” 

Steve raised an eyebrow, because Danny was the one with the over-protective genes. 

“Kids have to learn to stand on their own two feet,” Danny continued. 

“I’m out of here.” Toast suited words to actions, sailing out of the door, his laptop tucked under his elbow. 

“Do you really think that?” Steve said, a little hurt. 

“It’s not a bad thing,” Danny said directly. “The kid’s a kid. He trusts you implicitly. He hasn’t learned to disagree with you yet – but he’ll get there. He’ll force himself to take chemistry and physics because you like chemistry and physics, when this year, he should stick with biology and do a remedial class in one of those subjects.” 

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” 

“Meh.” Danny shrugged a shoulder. “You’re benefiting from my vast experience. And the fact that I was a solid B+ student, not the class valedictorian.”

Steve canted his head to the side and pursed his lips together. 

“You’re adorable.” Danny reached out and patted Steve’s cheek. “You’re a very bright guy. You decipher puzzles for fun. You actually understand differentiation and integration. You’re not wise, but you are intelligent. Whereas, I am wise. I am a font of knowledge. This is why we are partners. Ying and Yang. Mobius strip.”

“Mobius strip?” 

“You know.” Danny drew his finger in a circle. 

“I guess,” Steve said, not really getting what Danny was talking about. Mobius strip didn’t really work as an analogy.

“Well, time’s a running. You finish up here. Go talk to Max if you really feel you have to do something relating to this case. Don’t forget the pizzas.”

Danny did a little head tilt, checking the immediate vicinity and then stretched up on his toes, to smack a kiss on Steve’s lips. They didn’t really indulge in physical demonstrations at work. Danny had thrown him into a loop. Steve tried not to be domineering with Nahele. He tried not to be his own father.

“Steve, you’re overthinking.” Danny rubbed a hand over Steve’s chest in a reassuring circle. “He’s been your ward for a couple of months. With kids it’s a new lesson every day. Continue to benefit from my vast experience.” 

Steve shot Danny a flat look. 

In response, Danny tapped a toe on the top of Steve’s foot and raised a knowing eyebrow at the flinch. 

“Use the stick. The stick in the office. A couple of hours without it is fine,” Danny said singsong. “You know what the doctor said.” 

“Short walks without the stick is fine.” 

“And you’ve been on it for two hours.”

“Fine,” Steve relented. 

“Don’t be like that. It is a partnership: we share. I’ll sort out Nahele and you follow up with Fong and Max on the case.” 

“Fine.”

~*~

The forensic analyses were ongoing. Their work was not like what people saw on television crime procedurals. Any analysis took time, albeit Steve suspected that some answers could be gleaned more quickly, if the analyst trusted their guts. Whether he liked it or not, 5O was actually only one of several departments, and forensics was dealing with other cases, and a couple with live victims took precedence over a dead victim.

He didn’t like it, but he understood orders of priority. 

Steve eyed the book. The evidence bag was unlabelled and that was a procedural error. He scrubbed his palm over the bristles on his chin. 

“Fong,” he said. 

The forensic officer was leaned over a table scrutinising dark, charred fragments scattered over a white tray. A few in the centre had been placed together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. 

“Yes, Commander?” Fong lifted his head, and blinked behind his magnifying glasses.

“Tag’s not filled in on the book.” 

“What? Oh.” Still blinking, Fong set his glasses aside. “That’s…” 

“A potentially significant oversight. It should have been picked up when the evidence was brought in,” Steve said flatly. 

“It’s a kid’s boo--” Fong began, “I apologise, you’re right. We’re very busy with Lieutenant Maxim’s case, but that is no excuse.” 

Steve held out his hand for a pen, which Fong obediently handed over. Steve filled in the tag, noting that while the bag had been sealed on site, the tag hadn’t been filled in. He pondered, and dutifully, wrote further, capturing the fact that the evidence was now possibly compromised (unlikely) since the evidence could have been tampered with and a new bag used. 

He turned the bag over in his hands. Oversights happened, people were human. But this book hadn’t been properly catalogued at the murder scene, nor when it came into evidence at headquarters. He would need to determine if anyone on the case was related to or knew the professor. 

“Commander?” Fong held his hand out. 

Reluctantly, Steve handed the bag over. 

“I’ll run fingerprints, take some swabs,” Fong said. 

Evidence could be collected but, regardless, the book was no longer admissible in a Court of Law.

“Update me. And when the book’s cleared, I want it on my desk,” Steve said. _Maybe there was something in the book that forensics couldn’t find._

“Yes, sir.” 

Steve limped off. Danny was right. Time to go home. 

_Don’t forget the pizzas. ___

__

~*~

Mamma Rosa’s passed the sentinel taste test, but more importantly it passed the sentinel restaurant-hygiene test. It was astonishingly grim how many restaurants did not past the sentinel hygiene test. Indeed, it was best not to dwell on the fact. Mamma Rosa was old school. Steve suspected that there was also a little bit of transference going on. He had yet to meet Danny’s extended family on the mainland, as travel was heavily proscribed for sentinels and especially guides, but odds-on Mamma Rosa probably looked like one of Danny’s grandmothers or great-aunts.

The tiny little restaurant was off the beaten track, and too many tables were pressed into the front room. They were all packed, and people waited patiently for their food, knowing that a lot of the dishes were cooked to order by Mamma Rosa and her youngest granddaughter, the only grandchild who had been deemed capable of learning the secrets of the High Art of Italian cooking. Another grandchild learnt Japanese cuisine at the knee of his paternal grandmother. Steve didn’t dare tell Mamma Rosa that he preferred sushi, but he guessed that she knew, since it wasn’t as if the family didn’t talk to each other. 

“Commander!” the eldest granddaughter chimed.

He had called in his order an hour earlier before checking in with Max on the autopsy results – results that were best not dwelt on before picking up pizza, red-rich with plump, smushed tomatoes. 

He had timed his arrival perfectly to appease both the master chef and get warm pizza back to a demanding pizza perfectionist. 

Elsa-Wang delved back into the kitchen to get the pizzas as Steve picked through his wallet, pulling out payment and a good tip. Quickly, Elsa-Wang returned with three boxes and a foil wrapped _risotto alla pescatora._

“Perfect,” Steve said. 

“Grandmother used the organic Zatoun olive oil that Sentinel Danny prefers.”

“Oh, you got a delivery?” Steve hefted up the boxes. 

“Finally.” She rolled her eyes, used to delays contingent upon living on a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific. 

“Give my best to your grandmother, and don’t let her yell at you too much.” 

“If she wasn’t yelling,” Elsa said dryly, “I wouldn’t know that she was all right.” 

“Hah.” Steve sailed out the restaurant. He had to get the pizzas home.

~*~

Perfect timing. As Steve parked his truck, Danny, with Nahele in the Camaro, pulled up behind him. Blocking in the truck, and ensuring that Steve could not leave without Danny. Sentinels, Steve thought ruefully. If they were called in, Steve decided, he would be driving come hell or high water.

“Ooooh, pizza. Pizza. Pizza.” Danny made with the jazz-hands, excited. “She got the oil.” 

“Yep, focaccia drizzled with your stuff.” The bottom of the box was oily. It smelled pretty amazing. “Margarita for you. Spinach and goat’s cheese for Nahele.”

Steve eyed Nahele. You didn’t need guide gifts to know that the kid was upset, the red nose gave that away. Juggling pizzas, Steve lifted up his elbow and let Nahele bury in. Worry and shame battered against Steve’s shields. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Steve soothed. He cast a worried glance at Danny as he handed over their takeout. 

“Inside.” Danny divested Steve of the goodies.

Steve three-legged walked into the house with Nahele clinging to him. 

“I’m sorry,” Nahele kept repeating. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey. What is this?” Steve got a finger under Nahele’s chin, and made him lift his head.

“I tried really hard. I did.” Nahele was wide eyed with consternation. 

“Is this about your grades?” Steve asked. “I know you’re trying. You try every night.” 

The kid struggled with his homework every night, barely accepting the help that Steve continually offered. Most nights of the week, Steve had to take his books off him and chivvy him to bed. 

Danny coughed lightly. “Can I?” 

Biting his lip, Nahele nodded. He stared at the floor. 

“Okay, the school did some testing--” Danny began.

“Without our approval?” Steve butted in. He tightened his grip on Nahele. 

“Well.” Danny waggled his hand from side to side. “The teacher, Miss Urban, in his remedial class made some observations. And, well, yes, probably, yes, she should have talked to us, but pulling off a bandaid.”

“Get to it, Danno,” Steve ordered. 

“Dyslexia,” Nahele muttered. “Dyscla… Dyscal--”

“Dyscalculia,” Danny said. “There has to be formal testing, but there we are -- well, it makes sense.”

“Nahele’s?” Steve bit down on his words, because Nahele was bright, but he knew that Dyslexia – he didn’t really know much about Dyscalculia – had nothing to do with intelligence. 

Nahele sniffed loudly. Steve held him a little tighter. The kid was going to pop soon, but he wasn’t protesting. 

“So next steps?” Steve said. “How do we help? Surely, this Miss Urban had some suggestions?” A problem had been defined, they needed a plan and an approach to manage the issue. They needed information. The internet was pretty limited, but they could use Chin’s magic to get around the public restrictions and there was always the library, and as the head of 5O, Steve could easily get into the Pan University libraries. 

Danny grinned at him, reading his mind, and offensively, finding him cute. 

“How about pizza first?” Danny shook the boxes. 

Steve was about to protest, but Nahele’s perpetually hungry stomach growled. 

“Pizza it is.” Steve slowly agreed. He could always start researching after food.

~*~

Steve opened the door to Nahele’s room a crack and peered in. The kid was scrunched on his side, Velvet curled in the bend of his legs. Diamond was up in the crook of his neck. Steve didn’t need to open the door to see if he was sleeping. The sleeping mind, deep in relaxation and not dreaming, was a quiet place.

Vel lifted her nose and her fluffy tail beat once in welcome, swishing on their blankets.

_Shush_. Steve breathed around his forefinger and then let his hand drift slowly downwards. 

She curled back into the blankets, content to stay warm and protecting her charge. Nothing untoward moved in the room – Steve wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for. The curtains gently wafted and the scent of plumeria was deep with jasmine and honeysuckle. Remarkably, Danny didn’t seem to mind the flowers in the gardens. Steve shook his head, dismissing his meanderings. Nahele’s room was safe. And it was Nahele’s room now, despite the lack of pictures on the wall and a host of teenager’s smelly detritus. Sprawling belongings would come with time. Steve’s grandfather’s bookcases still covered the north wall, too large and heavy to move. Nahele said that he didn’t mind. Steve regarded the locked, glass cases, their contents hidden behind sun-protective paisley curtains – did their presence mean that this could never become Nahele’s room? Their ‘ohana had moved Nahele into the study and set up the box room for George, building beds and wardrobes, and shifting a lot a crap into the garage to take to Goodwill, and moving other stuff into the loft. Sweaty and tired, everyone had enjoyed the barbeque afterwards. 

Steve slowly closed the door, and padded down the short corridor. He cast his gaze into George’s room and then Grace’s despite that they were at Rachel’s. He made an about turn and slipped into his and Danny’s room.

“Secure?” Danny raised an eyebrow. 

Danny had carried out his own check. They knew each other’s needs. 

“Sleeping like a baby. Vel and Diamond are with him.” 

Danny snorted. The battle against dogs on beds was ongoing. The cats simply couldn’t be schooled. Therefore, Grace had argued, it wasn’t fair to exclude Vel from sleeping with George or Nahele as the mood took her. Danny moaned that they might have a lawyer in the family. 

As long as Vel was cleaned and brushed, Steve didn’t have any arguments left. 

“Where’s Moku?” Steve dropped to the floor as if starting a press-up and peered under the bed. The kitten liked to sneak up on Danny –and while hilarious, it wasn’t that funny at three o’clock in the morning. Swinging his good foot into the runner’s position, Steve stood up. 

“Outside, teasing your memhuhue thingies.” 

“Menehune,” Steve corrected, although he knew that Danny knew the correct pronunciation. 

“Meh.” Danny picked his book up. 

“I’m going to have a shower.” Words followed motion. 

Steve cast his shorts and top into the laundry basket. He sat on the side of the bath to unwrap his ankle. The skin was pale and pasty after being trapped in a cast. But the break had healed well, and soon he would be able to run. He couldn’t wait. Free of the bandage, he gave it a good wriggle, grimacing at the stiffness and the click when he twisted it just so. 

Steve scrubbed under the shower--his three-minute shower was now a five minute shower--washing off the day’s detritus. Danny had already had his shower. Steve toed a couple of random hairs into the drain trap, and retaliated by using Danny’s expensive shampoo. 

“That’s mine,” Danny yelled. “I can smell the sage and rosemary.” 

“It smells nice!” On automatic, Steve scrubbed his hair into a rich lather and then used the suds to wash from head to toe and rinsed off. He towelled off, using Danny’s towel, and then threw it in the laundry basket. 

He wandered back into the bedroom. “Sex?” Steve asked, hands on hips. 

“The romance is dead.” Danny didn’t look up from his book, so Steve pulled on a pair of boxers. 

“What are you reading?” Steve flopped down next to him. 

“Val McDermid.” One of Danny’s favourite authors. 

Crime novels, Steve considered, were very predictable, and thus boring. It was always so very easy to identify the murderer. He figured Danny enjoyed them because he found them restful. 

“You alright?” Steve flipped onto his side, head pillowed, and squinted up at Danny. “I mean, uhm…” 

“Humf,” Danny grumped and set his book aside. 

They had had their pizzas and risottos, respectively. Danny had placed a moratorium on both homework and talking about the subject and had opted to inflict some classic Western on them that Steve had missed the first five minutes of – answering his phone -- and thus didn’t care about. 

Danny said that that was indicative of his control freak tendencies. 

As a result, they hadn’t talked about Nahele’s diagnosis, and Steve, in the face of Nahele’s relief, had let it go for the night. The kid avoided trouble like it was conditioned into him. In fact, it probably was. Guides were supposed to be calm, quiet, and self-effacing.

“I just, I just – why didn’t we notice?” Danny asked. 

“Come on.” Steve tugged him down, and pulled Danny’s head onto his shoulder. He snuffled at the bright gold strands. “We did, sort of …? I mean, we knew that he was struggling, we just didn’t know why. You got him to go to the remedial classes.” 

“Why didn’t they pick this up on ‘Aina?” Danny griped, even though he knew the answer. “Guides don’t need much education, do they?” 

Steve scrubbed his bristly chin over Danny’s head, mussing up his hair. 

“One, we have an assessment, two, we get an official confirmation – you said Nahele had to be formally diagnosed? – three, we find out how we can help.” The mission parameters were fixed. 

“Okay, Babe.” Danny patted Steve’s tummy fondly. 

**End part one**


	2. Part Two

**Part two**

“There’s a really good organisation here in Hawaii.” Steve thrust his tablet under Danny’s nose. 

“What?” Danny shied backwards in his office chair, blinking furiously. “Not so close.” 

Steve pulled back the tablet a fraction. Danny sometimes had a problem focusing on electronics-- getting trapped in the pixels and the structure of a screen, especially if there were also LEDs illuminating the screen. Also, perhaps, sometime in the near future, there might be some tortoise shell rimmed glasses adding to Danny’s appeal. 

Danny snatched the tablet from Steve. 

“More reading?” Danny blinked at the screen. He propped the tablet up on the table. “Isn’t that the crux of the problem?” He drew a stubby finger over the screen, scrolling the page, scanning the headlines. “All types of reading? You’ve got lots of books in the mausoleum. We could give him free reign.” 

Steve pulled his best unimpressed face. 

“Audiobooks!” Danny continued reading. “Especially if we can get his subjects on tape. Oh, we could read and record them for him, couldn’t we?” 

“That would be--” 

“Reading tips? Hmm, I think that this is for a younger kid? I don’t see how reading out loud helps?” Danny looked up. 

“I’ll leave you to it.” Steve turned on his heel. “I’m going to raid the stationary cupboard and get Nahele a day planner, coloured post-its, and every colour of highlighter I can find.” 

“I hate you,” Danny said. 

“I love you too,” Steve carolled back.

~*~

Steve scratched at his sideburn as Charlie Fong’s mouth moved. Normally, he compartmentalised as a matter of course – he was skilled. But he couldn’t let Nahele’s diagnosis, incipient diagnosis, out of his mind.

Not being able to read… or read well. It seemed more like a punishment than a condition. 

“Commander?” 

Steve shook himself. “Sorry, Max—Charlie. You were saying?”

“Are you okay, Steve?” Danny moved an infinitesimal step closer. 

“Yes,” Steve said, deliberately, and he did not lean towards Danny. “You were saying, Charlie?”

“The round that we took out of the wall was lead,” Fong said.

“As is lead – lead?” Steve held his thumb and finger a fraction apart. “No iron core encased in lead?”

Fong nodded, happily. “It had, of course, passed through the victim’s head before it hit the wall. The round is flattened and I can’t extract any other information but--”

“But it’s old. As in probably pre-second World War old,” Steve took Fong’s thunder. 

Fong deflated. 

“Being a detective and all,” Danny said, “and having some background in ballistics; I call that a clue. It’s either old, or someone is handcasting their own bullets.”

Fong’s aura flattened further; the wind taken out of his sails. Steve guessed Fong normally imparted his wisdom to somewhat less experienced detectives, rather than them making immediate inferences based on the nuggets he handed out. However, wasn’t that what detectives were supposed to do? Steve smiled proudly at Danny. 

“Okay.” Danny played with the end of his tie as he put his thoughts in order. “Question is: where do you buy absolutely ancient rounds from in this backwater?” 

“Actually, you’ve got the round. What size was it?” Steve gave Fong the opportunity to play. Although looking at the image on the monitor that Fong had projected, Steve could make an educated guess because there was a calibration overlay. 

Fong held his thumb and forefinger a fraction apart. 

“So standard cartridge,” Danny inferred. “Old bullet. Hmmm.” 

Steve rocked introspectively on his heels. “Nine mils is standard. Been around forever.” 

“While gun owners with the appropriate permits can purchase 9×19mm Parabellum cartridges in small amounts, they will be the modern type.” Fong scrabbled on his lab bench and selected a spent cartridge in an evidence bag from a small box and held it up. 

Unnecessarily, Danny leaned forwards to scrutinise the bag. But the evidence tag was blue, indicating burglary so it was not pertinent to their case, it was merely an unneeded example. 

“I’m not aware of anyone that deals in century old cartridges in the State of Hawaii,” Fong said. 

“Century. Century?” Danny counted on his thick fingers. “Yeah, I guess, you said before World War Two that’s a hundred years ago. I figure then auction houses?” 

Steve pondered, thinking on his grandfather’s gun collection under the locked away stairs. 

“Or a heirloom-souvenir from the First World War,” Steve proposed. 

“So, we’re looking for a gun nut?” Danny summarised.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Thanks, Charlie.” Steve set his hand low on Danny’s back and prompted him to head on out of the forensics’ lab. 

“Yeah, thanks, Charlie,” Danny said, as he was propelled out of the door. “Stop pushing. What is your problem?” 

“I don’t have a problem.” Steve picked up the pace, ignoring his ankle. “But it’s time to get Toast involved. And we have to get HPD to refocus their door-to-door on collectors and anyone with great-grandad’s old gun.” 

“Because old bullets means old guns?” Danny said in shorthand. 

“Likely,” Steve agreed. “Toast can use his various contacts to see if there are any groups on the island who have interest in old weapons and the like.” 

“And you don’t know?” Danny huffed. 

“I’m aware of a few aficionados at the Honolulu range,” Steve admitted. “We can talk to them.”

“And Toast can put together a list, and we can see if there are any correlations with our murder vic,” Danny said. “We can get him to access the private owner gun database.”

Steve liked it when they were on the same level. 

“And meantime,” Steve said, “Kono can review the HPD door-to-door reports so far and see if there is anyone in the vicinity who has admitted to owning guns or gun collections.” 

“Reports?” 

Steve stuck his hands in his pockets. “Not everyone who has these types of collections has reported them.”

“That’s against the law.” Danny bristled. 

Steve refrained from pointing out that the majority of his grandfather’s collections were not reported in any way or form. And he had not admitted to owning the bazooka that he had in the back of the secure cabinet behind the secondary false wall.

~*~

“Handcasting,” Danny said.

“What?” Steve rubbed tiredly at his face. The morning had been long and boring, looking at reports and files. He was only just back at work after a long sick leave and he felt unfocussed. Steve wanted to be outside, but the firing range only opened for two hours a day and that was early in the morning when the air was most likely to be flat calm. The owner was on retreat in Kalanana Haven reserve, but there was no immediate link between Mrs. Delano and Professor Reeves to necessitate the team to go hiking to find her when they had a list of the range’s members kindly provided by her assistant. 

Sometimes the investigation side of detective work was boring. The same was true of being a Pan Navy SEAL at times. 

“We forgot to follow up on the handcasting idea,” Danny said. 

“We’re looking for people who use old rounds, so they’re probably using an old gun.” Steve leaned back in his chair and carefully lifted his foot onto the table as Danny dropped into his favourite spot on the sofa. ”Interest in history, so probably an interest in old skillsets. If we look for people who use old weapons, we’re probably going to also find enthusiasts who make lead rounds.” 

“Could you handcast a round?” Danny shot back. 

“Given time,” Steve said easily. He would have to dig up a few books for intel and would have to jerry rig a home furnace, but he could figure out the bare necessities, especially if it was a simple solid lead bullet with no special jackets or other accoutrements. “The mould would be the hardest thing to manufacture. But I’m guessing I could cobble one together.”

Danny waggled his finger from side to side. “No thinking about experimenting.” 

“I wasn’t,” Steve lied. 

Danny launched himself out of his seat. Steve braced himself, but Danny only came over to the table and grabbed his foot. 

“Stay,” Danny stated. 

“Woof. Woof.” But Steve kept still as Danny unlaced his boot. 

Impressively, Danny didn’t wrinkle his nose as he pulled off Steve’s sock. Steve knew what his feet smelled like; he liked exercise, and for several months that foot had been encased in a cast. He didn’t like looking at his foot--all pasty pale and angular. Danny ran sure fingers over Steve’s ankle bone and top of his foot. Manfully, Steve withheld a wriggle. But Danny wasn’t tickling; he was examining, stroking tendons and ligaments. 

“It’s sore,” Danny announced. 

“Do you feel that? Or do you sense that–heat and inflammation with your fingertips?” Steve asked, interested. 

“Science Steve,” Danny said fondly. He bit his bottom lip. 

“Which?” Steve prompted. 

“Both.” He blew on his fingertips. “Mostly the heat. You’re walking on it too much.” 

“I’ll use the walking stick,” Steve allowed, because his ankle was hurting, and he wanted it to stop hurting and finish healing, so he could run to his heart’s content. 

“I want to go over the professor’s house again.” Danny started to wrangle Steve’s sock back on his foot like he was a toddler. 

“Why?” Steve pulled his foot out of Danny’s grasp and took over. He wanted to go out and was willing to use the stick. 

“Dunno.” Danny sucked his cheeks in, introspectively. 

“Okay.” Steve eyed him, as he laced up his boot. Danny processed information on many levels; subliminal to overt-in-his face. If Danny wanted to go over the crime scene again, Steve could only agree. Clearly, something had caught his attention. 

As Steve stood, Danny handed him his walking stick.

~*~

Steve stood in the centre of Prof. Reeves’ living room as Danny paced from room to room in the one storey bungalow. Occasionally, Steve tapped the stick’s rubber tip against the wood floor with a dull thump.

“I’m not going to zone you know.” Danny huffed. 

“I’m setting up minute vibrations to help you map the rooms. Like a bat.” 

“A bat?” Danny hummed under his breath. “Ah yeah, of course.” 

“You got something?” 

“Not like a bat.” Danny sniffed loudly. He slid open the doors onto the lanai. The mechanism grated. “These doors were left open. The perp was standing here. The prof. was sitting in the armchair.”

The chair had been taken to forensics. A pink-tinged pile of absorbent and deodorising granules had been scattered over the blood spatter on the wooden floor where the chair had sat.

“Yes.” Steve liked watching Danny perform. He stepped left, shifted a fraction right and settled, legs apart, hand braced on the stick, finding the right position.

“So, we have the bullet hole.” Danny pointed at the hole in the plasterboard. Hand out, finger cocked, thumb standing proud, he bent a fraction. “So, I’m five foot six, and I’m guessing our perp is five four-three.” 

“A kid, then.” Steve said. Fong hadn’t provided them with the confirmed calculation yet -- he was busy with a hundred and one cases -- but it wasn’t as if they couldn’t do the estimations themselves. 

“Significantly smaller than the average man but he’s got big feet – room to grow. So yeah.” Danny stood tall. 

“Or they were crouching?” Steve offered. 

“One shot, effective but not centre body mass or through the back of the head? I’m guessing inexperienced.” 

“Okay, kid.” 

“And would a kid know to police their brass?” 

“Forensics didn’t find any.” 

“Yeah, but I can smell…” Danny cast around his feet. He toed aside the plant pots tucked up against the house on the lanai. 

One shot, so likely from a hand gun, and a spent cartridge would eject from the chamber into the air. Steve narrowed his eyes, studying the doorway. On either side of the frame, there were matching hanging baskets filled to overflowing with violets and pansies. 

“The hanging basket,” Steve said. 

Danny grinned widely, and Steve basked. Danny got his black neoprene gloves from his back pocket and pulled them on. Standing on his tiptoes, he rummaged. Steve, resisted the temptation to point out that he wouldn’t have had to stand on his tippy-toes. Almost. 

“You know--”

“Yes!” Danny exulted. He held a cartridge between his finger and thumb. “Evidence. Detectoring.” 

“I don’t think that that is a word.” 

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Danny was more interested in the cartridge, holding it up. “Yeah, this isn’t standard. I’m guessing First or Second World War.” He held it out for Steve to see, far too far away from him to see any detail other than it was of simple construction. 

Brow furrowed, Danny held the cartridge at arm’s length, and rotated it from side to side.

“What are you looking at,” Steve asked. 

“The angles aren’t right.” Danny clicked in the back of his throat. His eyes narrowed. 

“Of the cartridge?” Steve said, perplexed. 

“No.” Danny pulled off his glove over the cartridge and knotted it up as he stalked over to the unused fireplace. He pocketed the evidence. “There’s a void.” 

“Behind the fireplace?” 

A fireplace that was an anachronism in tropical Hawaii. Danny ran sentinel-sensitive fingertips over the stonework. Setting his walking stick aside, Steve got right up into his space. 

“This is better than Murder Mysteries on CBS.” Danny pressed a brick and the entire wall clicked and swung forwards. There was a hiss of air redistributing. 

Steve laughed. 

“Hahhah,” Danny crowed, stepping out of the way of the opening secret door and forcing Steve back. 

They danced, and Steve was half-tempted to pick Danny up by the waist and lift him aside, so he could see through the gap first. 

“Ah ah ah.” Danny aborted such shenanigans, slapping Steve’s hands on his waist. “Let me check. Booby traps.” 

“No way?” 

“No.” Danny huffed and stepped aside letting Steve see into the narrow room, more like a passageway between rooms. 

Books and books, and more books packed in every corner of the nook--packed to the rafters. There was what looked like a stack of comics on a single shelf. Steve drifted forwards. A single strip of fluorescent light illuminated the book alley. Steve didn’t know where to start. Randomly, he glanced at books, known and not known: Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land; Crowfoot, Open Doors; Seigel, Superman; Le Guin, Rocannon's World, and so many more. The smell of lignin was strong. This was the hidden world of a serious collector. A single psychedelic print was propped on the floor against the far shelf. Steve didn’t recognise the image, only the style of the 1960s. A crow or raven dressed in blacks and purples mantled over an open book against a back drop of rainbow swirls. The raven’s single eye gleamed. The image made Steve feel groovy. 

“Whoa,” Danny said. He squeezed past Steve. “What on Earth?” 

There were even some VHS tapes, carefully labelled: Star Trek, Jetsons, Galaxy Plato, something called Object Z. What was Doctor Who?

“Science fiction,” Steve explained. “Like Battlestar Galactica.” 

Danny gave him the hairy eyeball. True love was sitting through a season of a programme that you didn’t really get because your partner did, albeit Danny had seemed to appreciate Athena, and funnily enough the whoosh of the vipers. 

“Yes, I remember your tapes of that cheesy 1970s TV show that tanked. But what’s with the terrorist paraphernalia?” Danny pointed at the painting. 

“One person’s terrorist is another person’s rebel.” The Hipster Movement had been put down hard by the Pan government in the late 1960s for advocating free thought and other non-social behaviours. The movement had been short, sharp, and had come to an explosive end.

“Star Trek. Star Trek,” Danny repeated. He picked up the box. The professor had taped a picture of two men--one in blue and the other in gold--on the front. “Star Trek? That rings a bell.” 

Steve didn’t have any copies. He knew what Star Trek was and he had even seen a lot of the season’s episodes when he had been stationed in Germany and Tunisia. But more to the point, Danny’s Dad had confusingly referenced it when they had first met. 

“Your dad.”

“What?” Danny turned sharply on his heel. “What about my dad?” 

“He’s watched Star Trek. He’s mentioned it to me.” Steve tapped the picture. “That’s Spirk. Spock and Kirk. They’re in the Space Navy in the Twenty Third century.”

“Space Navy?” 

“Yes. It wasn’t called the Space Navy, it was called Starfleet. But it was the Space Navy. I’ve only seen a few episodes. It’s old. Dated, but good.” He and his other Team members had come up with an effective drinking game to go along with their late-night viewings. 

“Well, of course, you think it’s good; it’s about the Navy. But why the Hell would my dad be watching this garbage?” 

“It’s not garbage.” Steve plucked the tape out of Danny’s hands and put it back in its place with a pat. “It was actually all about equality and imagining a great future.” 

Danny stared at him.

“It was also pretty kitschy,” Steve admitted. 

“It’s as if you’ve metamorphosed into someone I don’t know.” Danny jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “This stuff is for kids.” 

“That’s the general opinion.” Truth to tell, Steve wasn’t much of a fiction reader, but he had been weaned on this stuff, and it was much more interesting than the majority of available, sanctioned fiction, even if it was frowned upon. 

The comic books were a mix of old school Spiderman and Batman. He smiled as he picked up a well-thumbed copy of what looked like an early episode of Spiderman. The cover showed Peter Parker, all skinny and gangly angles, hunched over a downed gunman. 

“Kids,” Danny re-emphasised. He plucked the comic from Steve’s hands, and flipped through the pages. “He got bit by a radioactive spider, for god’s sake.”

“And turned into a sentinel, everyone’s dream. With great powers come, great responsibility. Inculcation.” Steve huffed and took the comic back from Danny’s unresisting fingers. He carefully set it back on the pile. No one got bit by a radioactive spider and turned into a guide. 

“He used the sticky stuff to capture criminals and swing between buildings,” Danny said. “I know that, I read these when I was nine. Nine. I can’t believe that you actually really like this stuff.”

“I made you watch Battlestar Galactica, you know I know about this _stuff_.” Steve waved his hand mimicking Danny. 

“Yeah, but that seemed more about Apollo and that other guy, Starbuck.” Danny cocked an eyebrow. 

Steve wasn’t going to deny that. 

“Look, my grandfather loved reading,” Steve explained. “One of my earliest memories is sitting on his knee as we read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.”

“The Little Prince?” 

“You know, I think you might enjoy it?” The book had to be in this collection. Steve scanned the shelves. And there stuffed between two thicker tomes was the narrow hardback. He pulled it free and checked it was in English and not the original French. He offered it to Danny. 

“That’s evidence.” Danny put his hands behind his back as if he hadn’t just been handling the Star Trek tape. 

“It’s not really. If the professor had been murdered for his collection,” Steve said, “the perp would have taken the Jules Verne book.” 

“Unless he was protesting this--” Danny shook his fingers at the books, “--deviant collection.” 

“Then the book would have been destroyed or spat on or something,” Steve said, “Deviant?” 

“You know, it’s not for adults. Stories about flying to the moon. It is kinda ridiculous.”

“I don’t think that deviant is the right word,” Steve said a little hurt. But, Danny was right, this sort of fiction didn’t have a good reputation. 

“It’s still evidence, we can’t discount this.” 

“I’m not asking you too. It’s just if we take this into the PD, they’re just going to throw it in a dumpster or worse an incinerator.” 

“And that’s bad, because?” 

Steve rubbed his hand over his face. “The professor’s spent his entire life pulling together this collection. Shouldn’t his family be able to choose what happens to this?”

“So, we investigate whether there is a link with this stuff on the side?”

“Yes. This is the work of a lifetime. You might not approve, but…” Steve sucked on his bottom lip. “That’s because you’ve been taught that this is weird. If your dad was here, he’d be all over this shit.” 

“And you think so?” Danny said archly. “My dad’s not talked to me about this.”

Danny and his protective attitudes could be a pain in the butt. 

“He probably has, but you didn’t get the reference. You said that he enjoyed the Jetsons – the cartoon.” 

“I still think that this is pertinent to the case,” Danny grumbled, giving Steve the win. Steve could feel him setting aside the whole issue of the books, like closing a door on the little library.

To match thought with action, Steve chivvied Danny back into the living room. “I’m not disagreeing with you. But if we drag HPD and forensics back in here, and if it is broadcasted that the professor was into ‘kid’s stuff,’ the case won’t get the attention it deserves because who cares about one guy with no family who has _deviant_ interests.” 

“True.” Danny was mulish. “People can be shits.” 

“So we focus on the kid perp. With the old gun and cartridge. Probably local or one of his students.”

“An aspect that Chin is looking into as we speak,” Danny pointed out, as Steve pushed the front piece of the fireplace back in place. The click as the door settled was viscerally satisfying. There was some kind of mechanisms in place to hermetically seal the room from Hawaii’s damp climate. 

The fact that Reeves was a serious collector was reinforced, Steve noted. 

“We can see if at the university there’s a club for ‘alternative interests’.” Danny made speech marks with his fingers. 

“You’re being an ass about this,” Steve observed. But, he knew, people were asses about this; adults had to put childish things aside. 

“I live to be an ass about things, but I’m not going to let anyone not help solve this case.” Danny bent and picked up Steve’s cane. “Come on, we’re going to the university.” 

Danny tossed Steve the hated walking cane. Steve caught it one handed. 

“We can check out the library for Nahele at the same time,” Steve said. 

Being part of an increasing family was all about multi-tasking.

~*~

So, funnily enough, the Pan University did have a _Speculative Fiction_ group on its list of student activities. The messy, paper-bedecked corkboard, hanging in the central foyer of the university, was practically obscured by all of the different flyers.

“I guess,” Danny said, “they’re still kids.”

“You’re doing it again,” Steve said. 

Danny threw his hands high. “Ray guns, space ships; it’s ridiculous.” 

“I’m going to make you read my copy of the Little Prince,” Steve grumbled. 

Danny turned on his heel. “What?” 

Fuck, Steve thought. Shit, did I think that at Danny? Judging by the wide blue eyes, he had indeed. 

“Of course, I have a copy. I have my grandfather’s copy,” Steve said, not lying. Lock down. Lock down. He threw up a veritable Fort Knox around his thoughts. 

Danny leaned forwards, mouth dropping open a fraction as he listened hard. 

“You’re empathising with Professor Reeves,” he said slowly. 

“Well,” Steve said pissily, “I am an empath.”

Danny froze and stared, because Steve rarely admitted the guide stuff out loud. 

“Steve.”

“Look, we’ll talk about it later.” It wasn’t as if he could keep any secrets from Danny, especially when he had that light of intent in his eye. Danny had lived and breathed being a ‘detective’ from childhood, handcuffing his errant brother to the rails in the zoo for misbehaving, to the day before yesterday when he had matched the invoices in two apparently unrelated cases and correctly identified the criminal behind the scenes. Sentinel and detective didn’t necessarily go hand in glove, but they did for Danny. 

“Steve.”

“Concentrate,” Steve said. “We’re looking for a kid that knows the prof. and likes deviant science fiction and has an interest in weaponry.”

“Or has access to weaponry,” Danny couldn’t help correcting (as Steve intended, to get him off the track). 

Steve tore the flyer off the activities corkboard. There was a contact name at the bottom. 

“Let’s find this Storm Aldington.”

Danny reached for the paper, but Steve snapped it out of his reach, and then led the way, at a very rapid march, to the reception office.

“Ankle!” Danny rapped. 

Steve stopped carrying his walking stick, and used it. 

Rachael, aka Storm, Aldington was studying computer science. They waited outside her lab for her to exit, which meant that all the kids in the class had to walk past them, which was all kinds of hilarious. Danny had clocked two for a further follow up, and even Steve could smell the pot.

She was maybe five foot nothing in her bare feet, which were very small and narrow so she wasn’t their perp. 

“Uhm, am I being arrested?” 

“No,” Danny said softly. “I just wanted to ask you about Prof. Reeves.” 

“Who?” 

And it all kind of went nowhere from there. She didn’t know the professor. Steve read the truth in her words, and Danny read her biological responses. The group was also focused on writing rather than reading _per se_ and collecting. 

Getting the whole group together gave Steve a headache; they were terrified of them. Danny had dropped into dad-mode when faced with three wide-eye girls and another one that quivered fit to shatter. They were all shapes and sizes but no size eight shoes, and they didn’t know Prof. Reeves. 

Steve stood at parade rest and debated internally whether or not to mentally calm them. 

“You’re writers,” Danny tried, “but I guess you share your interests with other people? Do you know any serious collectors?” 

“Sir, Mr. Sentinel,” the quiverer managed, “we want jobs after university. It was just pure luck we figured out each other.”

“How?” Steve grated. 

“Me and Stormy are in English Lit. I wrote something and she figured it out. Stormy knew Babs and Babs knew Nola.” She pointed at the other girls in turn. 

A bit like a cell, Steve thought, apart from the flyer. 

“The flyer kind of makes me not believe that,” Danny said reading Steve’s mind. 

“I put _speculative fiction_ for a reason,” Stormy said snottily. “And it was just lucky you saw it, we only agreed to put it up for a couple of days.” 

“Yeah, and look what happened,” Babs growled. 

“Look, this doofus likes your shit.” Danny pointed at Steve. 

Four sets of eyes stared at him. Babs looked him up and down like a hank of beef. 

“So you don’t know the Prof. and you don’t know any collectors,” Steve said trying to keep them on track. 

Storm shifted. 

Danny crossed his arms and merely regarded her. 

“Fine,” she muttered. “I’ll take you to talk to a friend of mine.” 

“Thank you,” Danny said pointedly.

~*~

Steve was all about torturing confirmed terrorists, who committed war crimes, and reprehensible criminals for information. Tormenting college kids, however, even if it was only with words, soured his stomach.

There was no direct link to be found between Prof. Reeves and any of the kids that they tracked down. Steve had had to prove his credentials on three separate occasions under Danny’s weighing gaze. Halfway through the interrogations, Chin called, and supplied the professor’s class list, but there was no correlation. Chin also reported that he had earlier in the day spoken to Prof. Reeves’ grad students, both of whom had alibis. 

Danny consulted his watch. “Aren’t you taking Nahele to the Kellykellythings in forty-five minutes?” 

Steve mentally kicked himself, swore internally, and then nodded. 

“I’ve got to pick him up from school.” Steve had a new appreciation for the juggling that Danny did on a daily basis. 

Danny laughed at him. Steve scowled. 

“Drop me off at the Palace and swing by and get Nahele, go to the thing, and then come and get me afterwards.” 

“You could come,” Steve said. 

“One of us has to do some work,” Danny said primly, but spoiled it by smiling. “Come on.” 

“What are you thinking?” Dutifully, to all appearances, Steve trailed after Danny to the car, stick tapping on the sidewalk. 

“This crime was….” Danny went quiet as he walked, putting his thoughts in order. “The murder was weird. We figure it was a kid, with access to an old gun. There was no confrontation. The professor was shot in the back, so-to-speak. The kid didn’t even enter the house. Shot once, ran away.” 

Steve could picture it. A teenager, and probably a boy, given the larger foot size, bracing himself, terrified. Shooting. Running away. 

“Why didn’t anyone respond to the shot?” Steve asked. 

“Good question,” Danny mused. “One shot in the dead of night. I’ll check the door-to-door records, but they probably thought that it was a firework or a car back-firing.” 

“So what are you thinking,” Steve persisted. 

“I’m thinking maybe the prof. wasn’t the intended victim.” 

Steve stopped dead. “Why?” 

“The prof. was essentially harmless.” Danny caught the hem of Steve’s shirt and tugged him along. “Well liked, quiet, a few close friends. No debts and lived within his means. He doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy to engender this sort of hatred. And we haven’t found any evidence of anyone with an axe to grind. Plus you said at the start that something about the case felt artificial.” 

“I did?” Steve fell into step. He reviewed his first impressions. It was hard to put his finger on, but there was something about the set up that had made him feel like he was viewing the scene through a window. “I did. It felt contrived? Pointless. Purposeless.” 

“So, I’m figuring that the kid shot the wrong person.”

“Shit.” 

“Yeah,” Danny said sadly. “So I’m going to look into the owners of the houses on either side of Prof. Reeves’ and probably the street over.” 

“The kid got the wrong house?” 

“I can’t figure any motive for killing the prof. So, yeah, I’m casting my net wider.” 

**End part two**


	3. Part Three

**Part three**

“He seems down.” Hale Māhoe, leader of the Kakawelewele, settled by Steve’s side on the sun scorched grass, as he watched the kids of the community play a bastardised version of soccer. 

“He didn’t tell you,” Steve noted. 

“He didn’t tell me what?” Hale eyed him sideways. 

Steve weighed Hale from the sun-bleached tips of his curly locks to his bare knobbly toes. Hale was an ageless man, tanned and toned by years of fishing off the reefs of Hawaii. Steve liked him, he couldn’t put it any more simply than that – he had a trustworthy, stalwart core. He was also firmly on Nahele’s side, and determined to let the kid find his own feet. Kila had, of course, directed them, correctly, when bringing the Kakawelewele to Steve’s attention as potential mentors to help Nahele find his path as Kānaka maoli alaka'I. 

“His teacher thinks he’s dyslexic and other stuff – learning difficulties. He’s got a formal assessment scheduled for next week.”

“But you think that that’s right?” Hale said. “That they’ve got that right?” 

Steve nodded. He had given it a lot of thought. He still thought that the majority of Nahele’s difficulties stemmed from a poor education under the heavy hand of Sentinel Central, and that was a problem, but it was compounded by the fact that Nahele confused Bs and Ds. Although, it wasn’t the capital letters that gave Nahele the most problems. 

“The way of words is not our tradition, we can help,” Hale said. 

Steve leaned forwards and wrapped his arms around his knees. A tiny kid dribbled the ball across the pitch, deftly, and the bigger kids paced him, letting him run uncontested. 

“True,” Steve said. “But Nahele has to have his feet in the both worlds. Damn it, I’m not going to couch this in metaphysical shit. I’m going to channel Danny. I get what you’re saying, Hale. There’s different traditions and ways of learning and communication. Like all the types of Hula are rife with traditions and history, and every Hula tells a story. But we’re facing Sentinel Central and the average Joe who thinks that we should be subservient to our sentinels and protected like children with no rights. Navigating this world needs an understanding of words and their meanings, so we can better fight them.” 

“Gee,” Hale said sarcastically, “I don’t know what you mean. You know, what with the cultural suppression and outright illegality of most of our practices since the nineteenth century.” 

Ruefully, Steve huffed at the Chief. The statement was a direct quote from the ceremonial masters when he and Nahele had first been presented to the Kakawelewele.

“On that topic,” Steve said. “I have a proposal.” 

“Proposal,” Hale said dryly. “What?”

“I need your word of honour that you’ll keep this a secret.” 

Hale shifted around, giving Steve all his attention. “You have my word, Alaka'I.”

~*~

“There’s two words for guide,” Nahele suddenly said, as Steve turned the truck down the boulevard on the last lap towards the Aliʻiōlani Hale, “like in Hawaiian.”

“What do you mean?” 

“They call me alaka'I but also ‘uhane within the Kakawelewele. Kawika called me Kānaka maoli alaka'I.”

“And?” The traffic was obscene. Steve slowly emerged between moving cars, intent on getting across to the parking lot. Supposedly, Danny was waiting for them outside the Aliʻiōlani Hale. 

“A Guide helps and supports the Sentinel. Alaka'I better means direction, to guide towards. But it can also mean like a book to show you how to do stuff.” 

“Instruction manual,” Steve translated. 

“But ‘uhane means soul.” 

Steve indicated and merged into the left-hand lane ready to turn at the lights ahead. You had to appreciate Nahele’s dedication. Steve felt in his very guts how uncomfortable having a discussion about _words_ was making him. Hale hadn’t given Steve a heads up that this was going to be today’s topic of discussion with Nahele. But Steve supposed, in light of his chat with Hale when they had watched the kids play soccer, he shouldn’t be surprised. Usually, on their way back from the community, Nahele took the drive as time to make sense of what he had learned. 

“Okay, words are weird.” Steve drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel. “But firstly, you’re not a copy of _Instructions for Dummies_. The word for ‘instruction manual’ in Hawaiian is ‘kuhi lihi’. Alaka'I is more appropriate, and it also makes us leaders or wayfarers, which I like.” 

Nahele grinned at Steve. 

“’Uhane is soul, but again it’s about context. To call us souls is in relation to the Sentinel -- not metaphysical sh--stuff. So I figure that it means soulmate in this case, soulmate to the Sentinel.” 

“You can say shit, you know. I’m fifteen.”

“Danny would kill me.” The traffic lights changed, and Steve turned. “I did meet someone who called me ‘Uhane hele, but that’s another story.”

“Like Nahele?” the kid pointed at his own chest, perplexed. 

“No, I figured, after consulting more than a couple of dictionaries, and talking to Kila, that it meant a helper or a trainee guide.” 

“Words are hard,” Nahele grumbled and slumped down in his seat, letting the belt dig into his neck. 

“Nahele,” Steve began, but he didn’t know what to say next. 

“What about guide?” Nahele asked.

“You mean as a word?” Steve took the question in both hands, rather than leading the discussion to consider Nahele’s diagnosis. “A word in English?” 

Nahele hummed a yes. 

“Same actually, ‘advisor’ or someone who shows others the way.” Steve smiled; Danny was on the sidewalk laden down by the stationary supplies that they had gleaned from the store room, “But we’re not manuals. You know, though, I kind of think that Sentinel Central wants us to be manuals.”

As Steve pulled to a halt, Nahele released his seatbelt and clambered into the back of the cabin to let Danny taken the front passenger seat. 

“Hi, kiddo,” Danny greeted as he passed the paper bag back to Nahele. “Presents.” 

“Presents?” Nahele echoed, as he opened the bag and peered at the notebooks and markers. He pulled out a highlighter. “Huh?”

“Stuff to help you at school.” 

“How?” 

Danny shifted around in his seat. 

“Seatbelt,” Steve ordered as he pulled away from the kerb. 

Danny shot Steve a look, but fastened his seatbelt. Nahele obeyed before they were a yard down the road. 

“Organisation,” Danny said. “And feel free to deface every book you have with the highlighters--” 

Steve shuddered. 

“--Every textbook you have,” Danny revised with weight. “I read that colouring the lines on a page will help stop you dropping through the sentences.” 

Nahele pulled out a handful of different highlighters from the bag in question. Steve viewed the rainbow of colours in the rear-view mirror. 

“What about library books?” Nahele asked. 

“Huh.” Danny looked at Steve, a little bamboozled. 

You had to respect Nahele; he was quick, immediately seeing the problem with that advice. 

“Leave that to me,” Steve said. He had an idea.

~*~

Steve rooted around the garage. It had to be here somewhere. Repairing the Mercury Marquis was an ongoing process, and as part of the work, he found and hoarded parts. He had an old side glass, but it was chipped, and he had thought about cutting it down to replace the front, triangular side window.

“Ahah!” He lifted the glass down from the top shelf. Perfect. The laminated nature would make it safer for Nahele to tote around. The question was how larger or small should he cut it? 

He took it to the house. 

Nahele was sitting at the kitchen table, homework, the information, and supplies gleaned over the day splayed before him. Danny pottered around him preparing dinner. The kid had a ruler and was using that on the book before him, to navigate the text. 

“So, what will be the best size to cut this down for you?” Steve grabbed one of the biology textbooks on the table and opened it, to size against the glass. 

“What are you up to, Babe?” Danny asked. 

“Cut this glass to the optimum size.” Steve tapped it. “I have to figure some way to fix different coloured rows on it. And then Nahele can set it over the library books he reads. Instant highlighting.” 

Nahele was staring, a little moistly. His bottom lip wobbled. 

“Oh, kiddo,” Danny crooned as he scooted around the table, arms open. Nahele fell into Danny’s hold pushing his face into Danny’s gut. 

“I didn’t want to make you cry!” Steve protested. “It’s to help.” 

“I know. I know,” Nahele mumbled, muffled by Danny’s love. 

Danny wiggled his fingers enticingly. Steve made a rapid two-step across the room, and folded them both in. Nahele’s distress beat against his senses. The kid was that peculiar combination of happy and sad. He stared at Danny, close enough to kiss. Danny crossed his eyes: _banana_. 

_‘What do we do?’_ Steve mouthed. 

_‘Hug him,’_ Danny mouthed back. 

“It’s okay, ‘Hele,” Steve said nonsensically, because clearly it wasn’t; their kid was crying. “We’ve got lots of stuff for you. Danny and I spoke to this great librarian at the university. There’s also this group here in Honolulu--”

The librarian had been very helpful. Steve hadn’t even had to flash his H5O badge.

Danny’s cell phone vibrated across the table. 

“Shit,” Danny said succinctly. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Nahele pushed back, making them both let go. He wiped at his cheeks. 

Danny reached over and snatched up his phone. “It’s Chin. He wants us at the Palace. Now? He said: now….” 

Mutely, Danny stared at Steve. He angled the phone in Steve’s direction. Reluctantly, he took it. 

_‘Office now. We have a lead. Time sensitive’: Chin. 18:43._ Steve stared at the tiny screen in his hand but the message didn’t change. 

“Go.” Nahele stood up. He swallowed hard. “I’m good.” 

Steve was torn, honestly, torn. But before his eyes, their teenager was shoring himself up. 

“You know, you know, this dyslexia stuff isn’t a….” Steve thought of what he had pondered on earlier. “It isn’t a punishment. It’s linked to creativity and thinking outside the box. Leonardo Da Vinci was thought to be dyslexic.”

The smile that Nahele gave them was so open and loving that Steve let the words trail off. Steve almost couldn’t parse what he was seeing. Nahele’s aura was both a mirror and a sponge. The colours were a deep organic green rooted in some way that Steve didn’t think that he had seen before. 

“Listen to a couple of those tapes,” Danny advised. He pointed to the audiotapes that they had borrowed from the university library after torturing the kids in the speculative fiction group. 

“Yes,” Steve mentally set the guide weirdness aside. “There’s a cassette recorder in the study. I know, old school. There’ll be some headphones in the desk.” 

The cell phone in Steve’s hand chimed with another arriving text. 

“Sorry, we have to rush out, kiddo.” Danny bussed a kiss on Nahele’s cheek. He stepped back a fraction, hands on Nahele’s shoulders and regarded him. 

“I’ll finish dinner, and make plates up for you.” Nahele’s bottom lip was firm. “I am okay, I promise.” 

His aura was rock solid. Steve was still loathe to leave, but Chin had said ‘now’, and that was uncharacteristically blunt. 

“Go.” Nahele flicked his hands, shooing them onwards. “I’ve got you on speed dial. I’ll call Grace and see if Stan can bring her over, if that will make you feel better.” 

“We’ll call Rachel on route,” Danny decided. He jerked his head, meaning the car. 

“Go,” Nahele said again. 

Steve nodded sharply and followed Danny out the door. Man, even the SEALs hadn’t been this hard. Steve firmed his own aura, flattening it out. The sooner that they dealt with whatever Chin had uncovered the sooner they could both come home.

~*~

“What do we have?” Steve wasted no time as he and Danny burst into their headquarters.

Chin was ready and waiting for them by the computer table. All the monitors were on, ready to rock. Kono was conspicuous by her absence. Chin didn’t waste any time. 

“Prof. Reeves’ next-door neighbour, Tran Beck, is a loan shark, and, possibly, linked with organised crime,” Chin said heavily. 

“Right,” Danny drawled, a tad smugly. “Told you that that happened on your pure and pristine islands of Hawaii.” 

“Isn’t it good that we have a detective from the east coast of North America who has experience of organised crime?” Steve snapped back. 

“Do we know what type of organised crime? I’m doubting it’s the Mafia,” Danny said. 

“We think that he’s a conduit,” Chin said, tone measured. 

“What?” Steve cocked his head to the side. 

Chin tapped the computer table and pulled up a series of scans onto the monitors. They were mostly phone records. Costly phone records spread throughout Pan North. Beck called the east coast of North America, New York; European cities, Berlin, Paris, London, al-Madinah, and Enteri – Steve didn’t know Enteri. 

“Huh,” Danny murmured as he scanned the information. “That’s a lot of traffic. So how come we have details of his phone calls?” 

“HPD can monitor a person with known or suspected affiliations to local gang activity.”

“Oh.” Steve rocked back on his heels. The case had suddenly taken another whole new track. “Local gangs? Kawika’s Kapu?” 

“Kawika’s Kapu,” Chin confirmed. “I assume that they are the muscle for his loan shark operation.”

Steve rubbed his hands together. “So we get to go and talk to Kawika.” 

“Hang on. Hang on,” Danny curled his fingers over Steve’s wrist, and pulled his hands apart. “Before we hare off and cause unparalleled mayhem, what’s this conduit thing you referred to?” 

“Traditionally, the places that Beck’s calling are hotbeds of the Sicilian Mafia, German Straßenkriminalität, and London Mod gangs. They’re different groups, with different, I guess, we can call them trades. Mods are in false insurance. Mafia, protection racketeering. I figure he’s supplying and trading information.”

“Internet activity?” Steve asked. 

“I’ve set Toast on that. But he doesn’t appear to have much of a footprint. Internet usage is heavily regulated.” Chin flicked the screen again, and images scrolled of a tall man, head shaved, tanned and healthy, jogging through a park. “He didn’t seem to be aware that he is under surveillance. Or he’s being very circumspect. Or doesn’t care.” 

“But we know he’s a loan shark?” Danny said dubiously. “Why hasn’t he been arrested?” 

“No, HPD gang unit _think_ that he’s a loan shark.” 

“How long have they been investigating him?” Steve asked. 

“One week initially, but six weeks in total. The phone calls are suspicious, but it’s not against the law to call Berlin, or have a strange conversation that is nominally, heavily coded.” 

“So how did HPD get onto him?” 

“One of his ‘clients’ came to HPD to make a complaint, and then died in a diving accident.” 

Danny growled. 

“The case was dropped. But a Detective Noelani Cunha kept a watching brief, because, as she told me, something about him made her want to keep an eye out. She’s been slowly transcribing the telecalls recorded during the week the case was live in her spare time, translating and analysing the conversations. She was the one who thought that he might be involved with several crime syndicates.”

“Translating?” Danny asked.

“He speaks German, Italian, Portuguese and English.” 

“So this guy is intelligent, circumspect, and if he’s talking to multiple crime syndicates--” Steve smiled predatorily. “Useful.” 

“The dead witness, did he have a family? A young teen?” Danny asked. 

“No.” Chin tapped the computer table and pulled up a photograph of a woman. A quick scan of the accompanying data showed her to be twenty seven, parents pre-deceased, no siblings, one aunt on the mainland. “Got into money trouble, no insurance after the tsunami. Realised that the person that she had taken a loan with was a shark -- possibly a shark -- and came to the police.”

“And dies.” Steve regarded the autopsy head-and-shoulder shot. A young life lost through no fault of her own. Another senseless death. 

“Hang on.” Danny held up a finger of the hand that wasn’t grounding Steve. “This guy was investigated for a week, before he got the witness killed. And today…?” 

“I immediately filed the surveillance paperwork when your requests to HPD about suspects in the neighbourhood came in and identified Beck as a potential link,” Chin said. “I set Toast on the case and he hacked Beck’s phones.” 

“That’s where Kono is?” Steve asked, jumping ahead of Chin’s explanation. 

“Yes, she’s actually in Professor Reeves’ house running surveillance. But Beck made some calls an hour ago and Kawika’s coming over.” 

Steve stepped towards the door. 

“Ah ah ah.” Danny hadn’t let go of Steve’s wrist. His calloused fingers were warm on Steve’s skin. “What time, Chin?” 

“Time? Oh, you mean the meeting. Eight.” 

“Okay, we have ten before we have to leave.” Danny tugged.

“What?” Steve protested as he was dragged to his office. Danny had a way about him; it circled around his lower centre of gravity. He could manhandle Steve around, deftly. It was very disconcerting. Or maybe Steve let him. 

“Here.” Danny poked the centre of Steve’s chest, and he plopped backwards to perch on the edge of the desk. “So this is how it’s going.” 

“What? We have to get our equipment.” Steve shifted the book that was digging into this butt out of the way.

Danny set his foot over Steve’s toes and pressed lightly. 

“You are on a phased return after breaking your ankle,” Danny said, “needing extensive physio, and having an extended rehabilitation. You are not cleared for active duty.”

“I am not not going,” Steve growled. A curdle of anger stirred in his gut. 

“Partners,” Danny re-joined. “You know, partners. Partners as in I look after your well-being, and I point out things that perhaps you haven’t considered.” 

Danny had a snotty way about him sometimes, it resonated in the way he emphasised _perhaps_. 

“I am not saying that you’re not going.” Danny leaned a fraction more weight onto Steve’s foot, and there was a twinge. “I’m saying, you stay in Reeves’ place, and let your sentinel and your highly trained team do the running.” 

“I’m the boss.” It sounded a little weak, even to Steve’s ears. 

“You’re the boss who didn’t bring his walking stick.” Danny raised an eyebrow. 

Steve scowled. But annoyingly, Danny was right. And he knew it. 

“Good.” Danny smiled like the cat that had got the cream. “I’m going to go get my vest.”

Danny swaggered out of Steve’s office. Steve made a mental note to tell Moku to make a sortie on Danny’s ankles next time he let his defences down. Annoyed, and a little turned on, Steve slumped back. The book edge dug into his hip. Huh? Steve picked it up. Jules Verne -- _From Earth to the Moon_. Fong had, as instructed, brought it to his office. There was a red sticker on the outside of the evidence bag: inadmissible evidence, security chain broken, with Charlie Fong’s signature, accepting responsibility. The evidence bag tag had been filled in, indicating that the forensic analysis had only found the professor’s fingerprints on the book, and no indications of any residual chemicals, other than those expected. While inadmissible _per se_ there actually wasn’t any link with the murder. 

Steve tipped the book out of the bag. The cover was faintly dusted with grey fingerprint power. He lightly blew on the book, blowing it away. He turned it over in his hands. He wanted to start reading. But now was not the time. He wanted this book. 

“You coming with?” Danny came back, toting their equipment bags. “Huh. Where did you get that from?” 

“Fong.” Steve set it aside. They had a case to solve. Two cases now: why Kawika was visiting Beck, and who had possibly killed the Professor while targeting Beck. 

“Man, I feel you drooling. Geez.” Danny turned on his heel, and stalked off. Across their meeting area, Chin came out of his own office with his own tactical bag and met him part way. 

Steve had wanted this book. He had wanted it from the first moment he had seen it. Steve smoothed the edge of the evidence tag that rendered it emphatically not part of the case. 

“Steve! You were the one that wanted to get going.” 

Steve set the book down and pushed a sheaf of files over, obscuring it from view. 

“Steve!” 

He went after his sentinel.

~*~

“This is so typical of our cases and lives, we think we’re going one way and then -- whoops – let’s go off on this tangent,” Danny grumbled.

Steve had the parabolic mike setup and headphones scooped around his neck, ready to use if the monitor tweaked, recording any active sound. At the moment, the line was relatively flat only showing ambient noise. Danny, arms crossed over his chest, merely stared at Beck’s house extending his sentinel-honed senses. As the sun started to set, twilight was rendering the trees around their suspect’s house a deep, aquamarine blue. 

Danny had kept up a low, soothing grumble since reaching Prof. Reeves’ house. The sources of his ire were varied: that he had had to speak to Stan to ferry Grace over to keep Nahele company; that Rachel had better things to do; the professor’s house stank of death; what was Kawika up to, and, weirdly, Beck wasn’t providing any entertainment?

Apparently, their suspect was having a nap. 

Steve regarded Danny. Eyes narrowed, nose tilted up, Danny’s ire was obvious. 

“What’s twisting your panties?” Steve asked. 

Danny glared. 

“Dunno,” he said succinctly. 

“You weren’t pissed off when we came before,” Steve said. “Beck would have been next door, then, if you’re picking up something from him.” 

“It’s not always about sentinel senses,” Danny said pointedly. “And maybe he wasn’t home? Maybe he was off somewhere being evil?” 

Steve huffed, accepting Danny’s words. He didn’t appreciate it when everyone assumed that everything that he did was embedded in the guide shit. 

“It’s tragic,” Danny said. “The prof. likely died because some kid was hurt and had access to guns. The kid’s life is over when we find him. Beck – unproven – is a criminal, a criminal who is a threat to Hawaii.” 

Steve stood up. 

“Threat to Hawaii,” Steve repeated. 

“Why is he here?” Danny asked tightly. “Beck travels a lot – all over Pan North. He’s looking for opportunity and he’s settled here in the meantime. After the tsunami, the local government has been focussed on rebuilding and handling emergencies. We’ve had a lot of new businesses coming into Honolulu and Hilo. Remember that resort being built on the east coast on your sacred site?”

“Yeah.” How could Steve forget? They had almost died, and both experienced for the first time the Sentinel and Guide’s overworld. There might have also been a spirit that had had to be appeased. 

“How the Hell did that resort get planning permission? One, it’s on one of your sacred sites, and, two, the place was pristine. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer sidewalks and cities, instead of your beaches and vegetation, but I get that they’re important. Super important to people.”

Steve had figured that it had something to do with the isolation and that the kahuna had been a hermit. The fact that the kahuna had died had also helped. 

“You think that there’s a link with Beck?” Steve pulled out his phone, already mentally composing the text to send to Toast to extend his search into Beck’s background. 

“No.” Danny sucked on his teeth. 

Danny saw problems. He was mentally geared to worry things to the death. However, he was a little like a weather gauge. 

“It’s symptomatic of a larger problem,” Steve translated. “Beck, as you say, exploits opportunity, and the State of Hawaii is vulnerable at the moment.” 

Danny growled, low, almost subsonic, under his breath. 

“And if he is linked to organised crime,” Steve continued, “and is selling his intelligence on opportunities here at home -- we have to nip that in the bud.”

“I have no problem with that,” Danny said. Sometimes in the right light -- the shadows long -- when Danny smiled, his teeth looked very pointed. Vulpine. 

Steve took the headphones off, and hooked them over the lamp on the edge of the desk. He stood -- feet shoulder-width apart, hands down by his side, fingers lose. Breathing through his nose and out through his mouth, he sought that empty space that brought insight. 

The world around him flooded with colour. Danny was a sharp, bright column of light. Steve didn’t know what the visualisation meant, but occasionally he saw auras in this weird way. Kono was below them in the kitchen, intent on gratification -- brewing up the prof’s hundred percent kona? Cosy with love, Chin was also in the kitchen. Steve guessed that he was texting or phoning Malia. 

Steve stepped outward, careful and cautious, extending his own empathic senses in much the same way he imagined that Danny used his sentinel senses. Rather than an ever-expanding globe, he concentrated on scanning forwards like the sweep of a radar mounted on the prow of a ship looking for icebergs. 

_Ping._

Beck was a stone in a still pond. 

_Ping._

“He's not sleeping,” Steve realised. A sleeping mind was different: in deep sleep, the mind was inviolate; the dreaming mind emoted in concordance with the dream, and light sleep was akin to watching waves lap on a pristine beach.

“What's he doing?”

“Meditating.” 

“Meditating?” Danny echoed. “For real?”

“He's a fit guy,” Steve observed. “Meditation is part and parcel of that; body and mind in harmony.”

“I don’t know. Seems not a criminal thing.”

“Perhaps. A criminal mastermind thing?” They already knew the guy was intelligent.

Danny pretended to stroke an imaginary cat in his arms à la James Bond’s supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Steve laughed, and Danny preened, just a little bit. 

“I--” Danny began, but stopped and leaned towards the window with intent. “Kawika’s coming.” 

“He’s early,” Steve said unnecessarily. “Does he have his goons with him?”

“There are two SUVs,” Danny answered. 

The roar of vehicles without mufflers reached Steve’s ears. The entire neighbourhood would wake up to this entry. Subtle, the Kapu were not. Footsteps clomped loudly up the stairs behind them, and Chin, with Kono riding his heels, came into the bedroom.

“They're early,” Kono said echoing Steve. She went straight to the window.

Unsurprisingly, Beck had a house hidden behind high fences and bushy vegetation. Only the edge of his front drive and the eaves of his roof were visible from Prof. Reeves’ house. Kawika's enormous black SUV with over large wheels pulled into the drive. The second vehicle stopped by the sidewalk, deliberately not blocking in Kawika’s SUV.

“Uh oh,” Kono said.

Danny raised an eyebrow.

“Kawika's all about the message,” she said. “I expected more vehicles. You know, it's pretty strange that they're having this meeting at Beck's home.”

No Kapu member got out of the second vehicle. 

“They left clear escape routes,” Chin observed.

“But if they do anything, it isn’t like the street hasn’t noticed their arrival,” Danny said waspishly. “This a reasonably well-off neighbourhood; the people living here aren’t gonna be members of the Kapu. Or leastways, only a few will know what the Kapu is… are… is.” 

“I think that you underestimate the reach of the Kapu,” Chin said. 

“They’re drug dealers, right? That’s organised crime.” Danny’s jaw firmed. 

“This was true a decade ago. And perhaps six months ago. But Kawika is the new chief,” Chin said. 

“So, you’re saying they’re not involved in organised crime?” Danny narrowed his eyes as he fixed on Chin. 

“I’m saying that I don’t know.” Chin met Danny’s regard neutrally. 

“Focus,” Steve snapped, and pulled on the headset, scooping only the right pad over his ear, so he could listen to the house and also monitor his team. Multi-tasking, he split his attention three ways. 

Beck’s mind was active. He was annoyed, probably by the early arrival of the Kapu. Kono, Steve thought, had a point with regards to the Kapu coming to Beck’s home. Albeit, it probably wasn’t his home, it was likely a front. But if that was the case how had the murderer known that Beck lived on the street? 

Steve closed his eyes and sighed – damn it. 

“What? What?” Danny said. “What’s the matter?”

“The kid who shot the professor is a member of Kawika’s Kapu.” 

“Eh? How do you figure that? Ah.” Danny’s mouth dropped open as he connected the dots. 

“Excuse me?” Kono, only a couple of years into the investigation gig, held up her hand. 

“You said it yourself, Kono,” Steve explained. “It’s weird that Kawika’s here at Beck’s home. Since when do loan sharks broadcast their home address? But Kawika knows where Beck lives, probably has a tail on him, or even helped him find a house on the down-low when he arrived. Someone Kawika is linked with found out Beck’s address.”

“The cops knew this address, though? They were surveilling him?” Kono said. 

“I--” Danny began, but stopped dead.

“D?” Steve asked concerned

“He's just set off a white noise generator.” Danny gnashed his teeth.

“So, he knows we're here?” Kono asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. It’s standard to stop people eavesdropping.” Danny strained towards the window. “The generator’s multi-phase—the frequencies and patterns are modulating.”

The directional mike was also not registering much, but it hadn't to begin with. Steve twiddled the gain dial, but it did not help. He had had much better equipment when he had been in the Navy.

“You know, we could scale that fence.” Kono pointed into the back yard. “If we got into that tree, Danny would have a clear view of the place.”

The tree was on Beck’s side, but a branch crossed over into Reeves’ garden. The solid wood, privacy fence was a noticeable contrast to the short fences on the other sides of Reeves’ property. Brand spanking new, unstained or painted, the fence screamed keep out. But the horizontal rails were on Reeves’ side, making it easy to scale. 

Danny pulled out the finger that was worrying his ear. Speculatively, he pursed his lips. 

“It might work,” Danny mused. “If I get a line of sight, I can augment my hearing.”

Steve weighed pros-and-cons, even as he ignored the complete lack of logic behind the fact that apparently Danny could see through white noise to improve his hearing. Sentinel and Guide gifts made no rational sense. 

“Can you climb that tree?” Steve asked.

“Of course I can.” Danny puffed out his chest. “And Koro is an accomplished tree climber.”

“This is true.” Kono said, grinning.

“I don't want to know,” Steve said. “Okay. Danny, Kono, get closer. See if you can pick up on any intel. Chin, I want you on the street ready to intercept Kawika or to stop the goons if needed.”

“And what are you doing, oh Great and Benevolent Dictator?” Danny asked.

“I’ll co-ordinate from here. We might struggle to hear them but I’ll keep a watching brief emotionally.” Steve didn't mention his ankle. “I’ll be able to tell if Kawika and his crew are about to explode.”

Danny was smiling proudly. Steve didn’t know whether to punch him or kiss him. Honestly, he was a professional. Steve knew his limitations; he didn't like them, but he knew them. Running wasn't on the prescribed list for his almost-healed ankle. He could, however, use his guide skillset.

“Don’t go too deep,” Danny said.

Steve hadn't had an ESO event for weeks -- he had been laid up because of his damn ankle -- but he took the advice in the manner it was intended. He had been benched. The most strenuous guiding he had attempted had been babysitting George. Nahele needed a listener, directed meditation, and the occasional word of wisdom. 

Steve needed to re-establish his authority. Danny was fully capable of leading 5O, and had been. But Steve was the leader.

“Do not engage, this is intel gathering,” Steve said. “Anything Danny does hear is admissible in court under oath. But we need to co-ordinate before going in and arresting the whole lot of them.” The team wore their tactical vests but the combination of goons on the street and inside Beck’s meant that they would be fighting a battle on two fronts, and they didn't know what armaments Beck had inside. They were also outnumbered three to one. 

Still keeping the directional mike headset on his right ear, he hooked his team comm. over his left. 

“Testing.” Steve tapped his comm.; it was a little crackly -- Beck had access to good equipment, which added credence to the fact that he might have unauthorised weapons in the house.

Chin nodded. “I'm good to go.” He jacked his Remington 870 and suited actions to words, striding off.

Danny sent a mocking salute, and Steve knew he was really hiding a need to kiss. Steve nodded, jaw firm.

“I’ll look after him, Boss,” Kono followed Danny out the door. 

Deliberately, Steve turned back to the window. Hugging close to the fence, using the twilight shadows, Chin was already making his way to the front gate to watch the street. Chin moved fast when galvanised.

Steve waited until Chin had taken position behind one of the brickwork pillars supporting Reeves’ wrought iron gates. It offered good protection. Steve breathed in through his flaring nostrils, held the breath for a count of six, and let it out gustily through his gritted teeth. 

_Docosapentaenoic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, B6, B12, calcium, copper, iron and zinc._ His mantra was his own. _Docosapentaenoic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, B6, B12, calcium, copper, iron and zinc._

Feelers were visible, he saw them and mapped the links that people made with each other. Auras and the ilk operated by line of sight. Beck and the Kapu were in the house, behind a fence and a wall of trees. 

_Docosapentaenoic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, B6, B12, calcium, copper, iron and zinc._

Okay, he could do this. Emotions were merely emotions – energy, hormones. Oxytocin, peptide hormone and neuropeptide, was the so-called love hormone, measurable and quantifiable. Emotions had a real and demonstrable foundation. Empathy wasn’t magic. He didn’t need to see a person to know how they were feeling. Steve could tell when Danny was upset on the other side of the planet. 

He could feel Danny, surprisingly, enjoying himself. Danny was tickled by the prospect of tree climbing. Who would have guessed? Steve had met Kawika – he knew the cadence of his anger. Kawika was in Beck’s house. Steve stretched forth, questing.

_Docosapentaenoic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, B6, B12, calcium, copper, iron and zinc._

Steve’s skin crawled. Beck, inside his house, was calm and felt like he was enjoying himself. Kawika was a rumbling caldera a hairsbreadth from explosion, but he held his own anger between clenched fists. The Kapu leader was an angry man, yet he fought his first impulses. The men with him…. Steve concentrated trying to get a sense of each one, but he didn’t know them. Steve stepped back fractionally; he had easily latched on to sensing Beck, yet he had never met the man. 

“Danny?” Steve whispered into his comm. “Do you get any sense that Beck’s a sentinel or… a guide?”

Danny’s shocked intake of breath echoed in Steve’s ear. He didn’t answer immediately. 

“No,” Danny said finally. He was perched on the edge of the fence, and looked straight at Steve across the width of the yard. “Not even remotely.”

The presence of another sentinel would crawl across Danny’s nerves like razorblades. Danny shot one more glance at Steve, and then reached up to the branch overhead and hoisted himself up into the tree. He disappeared into the lush foliage. Kono was nowhere in sight. 

Steve flexed his toes in his boot, and used the flare of distant discomfort to focus. 

Three people were with Kawika, angry, resentful and supremely bored in turn. Beck was still enjoying himself, but there was a sense of anticipation brewing. Something was brewing. Acrid-floral saliva flowed in Steve’s mouth. 

“Danny,” Steve said, “Beck is up to something. Dunno what it is. It tastes… tastes venomous?”

The comm. clicked in Steve’s ear; his team had gone into the sphere of Beck’s disruptor. Steve ground his teeth. He should be with Danny. 

There was the telepathy thing, but they rarely used it in earnest. It was soft and instinctual, or caught in the moment. 

_Danger._

He felt the pulse of Danny’s acknowledgement. 

Venomous. The curious taste stayed in Steve’s mouth. How could Beck be venomous? Poison? Beck was going to poison the Kapu. Beck was the viper delivering the toxin to the unaware. 

::Danny!::

Danny's understanding was, surprisingly, coupled with an image of a carafe of coffee. 

The rap of a shot made Steve jump, and he knew -- just knew -- that Danny’s had shot the coffee pot out of Beck’s hands. 

Mayhem was going to follow. 

Steve had Honolulu Police Department on speed dial six after Danny, followed by Grace, Nahele, Kono, and then Chin. The phone clicked and a young voice responded: “HDP, what is your emergency?” 

“Commander McGarrett, 5O. I need SWAT and Duke at –”

Steve clearly heard the door on the lanai below him slide open with its grating creak. Judging by the swaying, rustling tree, Danny and Kono were rapidly descending. Chin was still behind the front gate, although he was splitting his focus between the Kapu and the tree. 

“-- at 111 Little Tern Drive, Keahi Point,” Steve finished. 

He heard the police officer repeat the address for confirmation, but Steve was moving toward the stairwell, Sig held between his hands. Craning his head, he peered down the gap to the main floor below. He couldn’t see anyone, but felt a sense of terror: raw and bitterly bloody. A visceral tremble crossed Steve’s own skin, and he fought not to mirror it. 

A criminal always returned to the scene of their crime. As an axiom, Steve had never believed it. But Danny had used the behaviour to solve a number of their cases. Steve drifted down the stairs, silent and deadly. 

A young man stood in the centre of the living room, facing the empty space where Prof. Reeves had sat. He held the distinctive shape of a German Luger -- too narrow barrel and bulbous locking link -- in his left hand. 

“Drop the weapon. And hands up,” Steve ordered.

The kid jerked, instinctually bringing the weapon up. 

“Freeze!” Steve rapped. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to shoot a snot-nosed kid with wide, moist eyes who had ruined his own life. 

The kid froze but his finger was on the trigger, and the gun was pointed direct at Steve. 

“You don’t want to do this, kid,” Steve said evenly. “You made a terrible mistake shooting the prof. Don’t compound it with your death.” 

The kid swallowed hard, Adam’s apple working furiously. 

“I didn’t mean. I didn’t know. I thought--”

Steve didn’t have time for this; his team were outside facing off against Beck and the Kapu. Steve didn’t want to deal with the kid’s confusion and despair, and the kernel of anger that made him hate everyone.

The harsh report of automatic fire made them both jump. The kid’s finger squeezed and the luger jumped in his hand as the gun fired. Trained so completely, his instincts honed, Steve twisted to the left and the round whistled past his shoulder, missing him by a whisker. 

“I said drop!” Steve boomed, and backed up his command with all of his empathic weight. 

The kid fell to the floor as if an avalanche of granite was dropped on his head. Outside the cacophony of return fire spurred Steve across the room in two massive steps. He got a knee into the perp’s back, young, elastic ribs bowed under his weight, and Steve corralled his hands with a zip-tie. Steve pulled the band punishingly tight, the flesh under his fingers turning white. 

“I’ll read you your rights when I come back. **Do not move**.”

He needed to be outside. He needed to be backing up his team. Steve raced around the east wall, bordering the long lanai, as Kono and Danny scrambled down from the tree. True twilight was on the cusp of falling into night.

“Down! Down! Down!” Danny screamed waving his arms. 

Steve obeyed, flattening to the decking, as the space above his head was strafed with automatic fire. Where the fuck had that come from? Someone was shooting from a considerable height, but they were deep in suburbia; the buildings were all about the same height. 

Danny was returning fire, the report of his weapon, distinctive. Steve rolled onto his side and scanned the air, half expecting a helicopter. The darkening sky was clear up to the twinkling stars. 

“Come on. Come on.” Danny grabbed and hauled Steve across the boards by the scruff of his shirt collar. “Cover!”

“Stop it,” Steve snapped, as they turned the corner and achieved protection.

Weapons fire was rat-tat-tat, but they were no longer targeted. The shooter was focused elsewhere. Judging from Chin, at the pillar, who was shooting down the street, the Kapu on the road had joined the fray. Beck had an accomplice and the person had likely taken the same vantage point as Danny and Kono, picking one of the high trees protecting the property. 

“Did you call HPD?” Danny asked. 

“Of course, I did. Where’s the sniper, Danny?” Steve pointed at the trees. Kono was braced up against the fence. Back to the boards, she was slowly making her way to Chin’s side, keeping as small as possible as to not alert the sniper poised above her head. 

Danny scrunched up his face, bottom lip out as he scanned. He was foiled by poor light. Danny leaned out of the protection of the house wall. Steve caught himself from grabbing and hauling him back into cover. 

“There.” Danny brought up his stubby Heckler & Koch P30 -- Steve held his breath -- and Danny squeezed out a single shot.

The pained shriek was loud, and branches moved, one after another, disturbed leaves cascading down the tree, as a body plummeted. A dull thud sounded on the other side of the fence. 

“Nice one, brah.” Kono sprinted across the lawn to back up Chin. 

“Siren,” Danny offered in return. “HPD on route.” 

“How many shooters do we have?” Steve asked. 

“Multiple. Kapu on the street. Kapu and Beck in the house. Come on!” 

Steve wanted to know what had happened when Danny had shot the coffee carafe out of Beck’s hands, but now wasn’t the time. He followed Danny in a rapid scuttle across the grass to the rest of his team.

“Are the Kapu shooting at the Kapu?” Kono asked over her shoulder as, crouched over, they reached her side. 

“I guess.” Danny wriggled past Chin and peered out into the street. “Idiots,” he said succinctly.

“The sniper effectively got them to return fire,” Steve noted. 

“Shall we just let them take each other out?” Chin asked pragmatically. 

“Presumably, Beck is still in the house, shooting. Egging them on. Hmmm.” Danny stilled. Steve set his hand on Danny’s shoulder. He could almost feel Danny extending his hearing, and marrying sight to the quest, to know more.

The HPD finally barrelled up in multiple squad cars, sirens blaring. One of the Kapu, using the SUV as cover, stepped out, turning to face the first vehicle coming down the road. Chin shot him in the back of the leg. Kono cackled. 

“Keystone criminals,” Danny muttered. “Ah ha. I’ve got Beck. Come on!” 

Danny did a complete one-eighty, running back along the length of the fence, as fast as a sprinter from a starting block. 

“Cover the HPD,” Steve ordered Chin and Kono, as he hared after Danny. 

Steve chased Danny around the corner, vaulted over a single board acting as a fence, and into another neighbour’s yard. On the left, a gate yawned open in Beck’s high fence; their suspect had escaped out back and was running. He had left the zone of the white noise generator and Danny had been on him like a mongoose on a cobra. 

Danny moved fast. He was already out of sight. 

Steve paced after Danny, careful of his ankle, tightly wrapped and supported in this boot. Where was Danny? Damn it, Danny was on the hunt. They were deep in suburbia. Houses backed higgledy-piggledy onto each other. 

Where was Danny? 

He had tracked Danny before with empathy. Steve knew the cadence of Danny’s emotions: volcanic. To be fair he could track Danny because he had been trained to track. There was carnage in Danny’s wake; a knocked over garbage can, a rustling rhododendron bush – the air seemed to move, eddying uncertainly after his passage. 

The conurbation was a maze of old and new builds, with the associated side streets and little paths. There was no rhyme or reason to the street plans. Danny was north east of his position. Steve picked up the pace, keeping to the dried grassy verges rather than hard sidewalk. 

Steve limped out of an alley into a space tucked behind houses. Danny was just ahead of him, gun out, clenched between his fists. He was hunting. From the high cant of his shoulders, Steve knew that he was tense, poised to react. The buildings on either side were garages and storage units. They were ramshackle builds, on probably abandoned land, supporting the tiny houses behind them. It was a perfect hiding and storage place. 

Danny turned. He held his finger to his lips: _shusssh_.

Steve nodded, acknowledging the instruction. He cast his own psychic senses out. Ping. Ping. Beck was very close. Anticipation coloured his mood. And intent. 

“Danny, look out.”

The roar of an engine and the paper-thin doors of the unit next to Danny burst open. Clipped by the breaking door, Danny reeled away. He tumbled backwards to the dirt. Beck rode astride a dual-sport motor cycle. 

“See ya, officers!” his glee was apparent. He flipped down his helmet’s visor and he turned the motorcycle on a pin.

Danny scrabbled to his knees, bringing his weapon to bear. Beck chucked something over his shoulder, almost absently. 

“Grena--”

The whoomp was light and sound and devastatingly oppressive. Steve clamped his hands over his ears, and keened. Or Danny keened. He couldn’t tell. Steve’s brain went off line for a moment or forever. He wasn’t sure. He rode the tsunami. 

The world blinked. 

Steve thought that he was making infinitesimal steps to Danny’s side. But he couldn’t tell. The pulse of sound continued unabated. But the blinding flare was dissipating. He could see shadows amongst shadows. Shuffling, Steve crept forwards. Sensing emotions didn’t help. Where Danny lived in his heart was now blank. Steve ruthlessly clamped down on terror. Danny was not dead. He was zoning; traumatised by the sonic grenade. 

Steve’s toes hit something yielding. He dropped to his knees. The skin-warmed cotton under his fingers was all Danny. Steve could smell him – warm and sultry. 

“Danny?” he couldn’t hear his own voice, just echoes. :: _Danny_ :: 

There was no way on any Gods’ green earth that Danny was going to come out of the zone with the cacophony beating down on his head. Eyes tearing, Steve scrabbled through the dirt. The grenade had been small, cylindrical and had gleamed in the dusk. Steve squinted at shapes and patted the ground. 

“Damn it,” he snarled. Bile reached up his throat. 

His outstretched fingers hit something smooth. It vibrated under his hand. Shooting the fuck out of it, was the best decision that he had made all day. The absence of sound was a pure relief that made him shudder. 

“Danny!”

Danny was a wax mannequin under his hands. His skin was cool and disconcertingly flabby under Steve’s touch. But an even, slow, pulse beat reassuringly under Steve’s fingers. Steve scrunched his eyelids closed and moved his eyes side to side, up and down. He blinked furiously, tearing up to try to clear his vision. 

“Danny?” Steve cupped Danny’s bristly cheeks and breathed on his still face. “Danny? Come back.” 

There was no response, and Steve didn’t blame him. His own ears were ringing. Time to bring out the big guns. 

“Danny. The suspect is getting away.”

“What?” Danny snapped. He opened his eyes a tiny fraction. “Eh? No? Oh, my… god. What happened?” 

“Sonic grenade. Effective.” 

“What?” Danny wriggled his hand between Steve’s and rubbed at his own face. “What happened?” 

“Sonic grenade,” Steve repeated. “Effective.” 

“My head.” Danny groaned. 

“You with?” Steve asked. “When’s George’s birthday?” 

Danny scowled at him, but answered, “June Sixth.” He huffed out a breath over his tongue, plainly a little nauseated. 

Sonic grenades were generally effective, but they were especially useful against sentinels, and they weren’t cheap. Beck had had time to pick the most appropriate, non-damaging (Danny would argue that fact, though) one from his garage. 

“Come on.” Steve hauled Danny into a sitting position. He weaved as if on a ship in a Force Eight. Steve clicked his fingers before Danny’s nose. “Focus.”

Danny went cross-eyed with effort. Manfully, Steve did not laugh. 

“He got away,” Danny grumbled. 

“Yeah, but we got his bolt hole.” Steve jerked his chin towards the open garage. Who kept sonic grenades suitable for taking down sentinels in a storage unit away from his house? Someone who had an arsenal?

Still wavering slightly from side to side, Danny turned his head to the doors. “I? What? Tick? Tick? No: Beep. Beep?” his gaze came back to Steve’s, coloured with befuddled drunkenness. 

“Tick? Tick?” Steve echoed. “Oh, fuck.” 

Steve didn’t hesitate. Who in their right mind used an analogue clock? He didn’t wait. He didn’t go check out his guess. He grabbed Danny by the strap on the back collar of his tac vest, positioned for just that purpose, and went for it – dragging Danny on his ass away from the ticking garage, across the hard dirt. 

Danny flailed like a caught fish, not helping, but not really hindering as his heels kicked at the air. 

“Dial it down, Danny. Dial it down, Danny,” he ordered, as he put as much distance between them and the garage as possible. 

The explosion as the bomb went off was a wall of air and sound, and somersaulted Steve ass over teakettle. He just managed to release his grip on Danny before the detonation or he would have probably dislocated his shoulder. Steve rolled up against a pile of cardboard boxes, probably the softest obstacle in the garbage strewn lane. He lay there, caught up, and just found a moment of quiet. 

He didn’t know what kind of explosive that Beck had used, but it had had the soft kind of _whumpf_ of the most modern of materials; small yield and devastating in the immediate vicinity. Steve opened his eyes. The garage was burning merrily. 

“Steve!” Danny got in his face. 

“I’m fine!” Steve batted in his hands. 

Turn a round was turn a round; it was now Steve’s turn to be pawed. The adrenaline spike from surviving an explosion had cleared up Danny’s zone-induced befuddlement. A noise stopped Danny dead, a noise like a half-assed bullet spanging. A second twang followed by another had Danny swearing. There was a dull knock, low in tone and teeth aching. 

“Damn it. Beck had arms in that garage!” Danny rapped. 

“We need a cordon.” Steve scrambled to his feet. He grabbed Danny’s elbow and started towing him backward. “We have to keep people back. Who knows what else he had in there.” 

There were shouts around them. Someone was coming down the alley to see what was happening. A woman hung out of her window peering for a better view. She held a phone. 

“Get back!” Danny waved his arms. “It’s dangerous.” 

A kid emerged behind the burly man coming to see what-was-what. There was a deep, reverberating thump as something larger than a round detonated in Beck’s store. A projectile broke through the rickety roof, rocketing into the air with smoke spiralling in its wake. 

“No. no. no.” Danny broke away from Steve. “Get back. It’s dangerous. Steve? Do it.” 

Do it? What had Danny sensed? Could he even put it into words? Who knew what heating explosives felt like? Tasted like on the air. Molecules vibrating?

“Do what?”

Danny wiggled his fingers feverishly by his temple. 

“Ah,” Steve realised what Danny meant on the heels of his instruction.

“Do it!” Danny was white faced. 

:: _EVACUATE_ :: Steve projected, and backed up the instruction with a cadence of do-not-panic. 

Danny blinked at him. His teeth clacked together as he fought the impulse. 

“Jesus, Steve. You’re getting stronger.” Danny didn’t waste another second. He caught Steve’s arm and pulled. 

Steve matched him pace for pace. The family ahead of them were running for cover, the kid tucked under his dad’s arm like a football. He could feel people scattering in his head – panicked but focused. It felt like the rats leaving some of the less salubrious vessels that he had boarded during his tour of duty in the Pan Navy. 

Danny swore. He barrelled under Steve’s arm, curled, twisted, and in an instant had the two of them down on the ground. Danny blanketed Steve, as much as he could. 

“Dial it down.” Steve clapped his hands over Danny’s ears. 

The detonation made Steve’s ears blank out. 

For the longest moment all Steve could feel was his heart hammering against his chest. And then the world reinverted itself. He opened his eyes and watched dust settling around them. Danny’s head was tucked against his throat and he was snuffling against the pulse point under the hinge of Steve’s jaw. 

“You okay?” Steve whispered. His ears were ringing. Danny had thrown them down behind the edge of a wall. The blast hadn’t touched them, but residual pressure made Steve tingle, or made Danny tingle. Sometimes it was hard to separate what Danny felt from what he felt. 

“Fine.” Danny muttered. 

Steve pulled him closer into a hug. Fine usually meant that Danny was anything but fine, because they generally used the classic definition: fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional, which was Danny’s normal mode of operation. But there were levels of fine. 

“Nice as this is,” Danny said as he rubbed his nose over the pulse point on Steve’s throat, “we can’t lie here cuddling. It’s a crime scene.”

Was Danny purring?

“Thirty seconds?” Steve offered. 

“Sounds like a plan.” Danny smiled against Steve’s skin. “I can hear the early responders on route. We’ve got thirty seconds.”

~*~

Carnage. It was all sorts of levels of carnage. Steve leaned against the computer table, arms crossed, reading the monitors.

The kid who had murdered the professor was in lock up. Beck had given the kid’s father a loan, jacked up the repayments, and followed through with a beating when he hadn’t been able to fully meet the repayments. Complications due to a heart condition, had resulted in Jay’s father’s death – and led to revenge. 

As a _kānaka maoli_ , Jay was a nominal member of the Kapu, but not part of Kawika’s cadre. He had expressed an interest in joining, and had an uncle in the gang. He had known enough to follow active Kapu members to figure out where his target lived – almost. 

Kawika was also in lock up, but annoyingly had lawyered up. Steve didn’t like perps who lawyered up. But Beck and Beck’s sniper had been the shooters, provoking the Kapu to return fire. Forensics had swabbed Kawika’s hands and there had been no residue, which astounded and perplexed Steve since the Kapu were known to run guns and drugs. 

Before he lawyered up, Kawika had said that he had been visiting Beck on business, which wasn’t against the law, haole, fuck you. 

Grousing, Danny had offered that they could probably get some of the Kapu for possession; one of the gang members had had a proscribed automatic weapon, another didn’t have a licence. 

“Not the best results of a hard day’s work,” Kono sighed, breaking Steve thoughts. 

“True,” Steve said glumly. “We got the murderer.” 

“But the Beck guy?” 

“As Danny would say: in the wind. I’ve got Toast trying to track him down,” Steve said. “And Chin and Danny are going over the garage, again. They’re not going to find anything, though.” 

Steve had gone over the demolished garage with Danny once the fire service had cleared the area. The sequential explosions had obliterated all the evidence. Forensics might be able to piece together an inventory of what Beck had been hoarding, but it would take a long while. Danny was the proverbial dog with a bone, and had wanted to give the scene another once over before passing it onto forensics. 

Steve had had to finally come back to update the governor, who didn’t like bombs as much as Steve did. 

“Chin just texted. They’re on their way back,” Kono said. She glanced at her wrist. “They should be almost here.” 

“Really. Okay, let’s call it a night.” Steve tapped the corner of the screen, pulled up the start menu and opted to hibernate the computer so that they could pick up where they finished tomorrow morning. 

“Thank Kāne and Kanaloa. Thanks, Boss. You can lock up. Bye.” 

Steve glanced up; the office doors were slowly drifting shut. The computer hadn’t even suspended and Kono was out the door. He hadn’t seen her move. His yawn as the computer chimed as it shut down surprised Steve. He yawned again, jaw cracking. A long day. A very frustrating day. 

He limped out their headquarters.

 

**End part three**


	4. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Steve and Danny tiptoed into their house. The television, according to Danny, was on but the repeating music was the dvd menu doing its most irritating thing. Whoever had decided that menus cycled over a mere fifteen seconds deserved to be shot. 

“Aww,” Danny breathed, as Steve peered around his shoulder. 

Cast in low, blue light from the cycling screen, their kids were out cold in the sofa. George, somehow, had also joined them, and was sprawled over his big sister and brother, a hand and foot on each. 

Steve snorted -- what a little card, it was as if he was trying to protect them.

“You get George,” Danny directed. “I’ll get Grace and Nahele to bed.” 

Steve didn’t argue. He could always wrangle the toddler without waking him. George was in his pyjamas and smelled of talc and baby lotion. He scooped George up and soothed Nahele with a mental brush: _your charge is safe_. George snuffled into Steve’s neck happily but didn’t wake. Cradling him, Steve carefully picked his way up the stairs. The repeating music, thankfully, ended. 

Grace was a little too big to carry but she didn’t protest as Danny curled an arm around her shoulders and shuffled her off to bed behind them. 

When Steve lay George in his toddler bed under the windows, he didn’t want to let go of Steve’s collar. Steve carefully peeled the toddler’s fingers off his t-shirt, giving each fingertip in turn a little kiss.

“Danno’s home,” Steve crooned. “Daddy sentinel is here. You can stand down.” 

George curled into his teddy as Steve settled a fuzzy blanket up over his shoulders. Steve gave it ten minutes before Diamond or Velvet joined him. Indeed, nails tapping up the stairs heralded Velvet’s approach. The black and white border collie stopped in the hall, head cocked to the side, ears flopping. Yawning, Nahele came up behind her. 

“Hey, Steve, did you get the bad guy?”

“One of them,” Steve didn’t go into detail as he crept out of George’s room.

“Good.” Nahele shuffled past Steve. On autopilot, Nahele reached up and brushed his knuckles across Steve’s temple. Honest heart-felt, love-appreciation-respect, curled around Steve’s heart. He froze a little stunned. Nahele drifted into his bedroom, half-sleep walking. 

Velvet woofed softly and followed Nahele. 

“You all right?” Danny closed Grace’s bedroom door. 

“Tired.” Steve leaned back to see into Nahele’s room. The kid was already face down on his mattress, head pillowed. Velvet turned once-twice on the end of Nahele’s bed and plopped down in a perfect circle, tail over her nose. 

“Nahele left plates for us to microwave.” 

Steve huffed, uninterested; it was far too late to eat. 

“Meh,” Danny said eloquently. 

“You wanna lock up, or shall I?” Steve said precisely. 

“I will,” Danny proclaimed, and jogged down the stairs before Steve could argue. 

Danny was the only person in the world that Steve trusted to lock up for him. He shuffled into their bedroom, focussed on getting to the en suite. He was covered in dust, and he could smell himself. He wrestled his t-shirt off, and his cargo pants and boxers over his boots. He dumped the clothes in the laundry bin. Tiredly, he slumped down on the edge of the bath and contemplated the next task for far too long. 

The sigh of relief when he got his boots off was visceral. 

Gods, they stunk. 

He eyed them. Ideally, he should put them in the garage with his runners, but he couldn’t be bothered to troop all the way downstairs and out the back. Plus, he was naked. Danny would probably yell. The bathroom window was open. They could air on the lanai, assuming he could lob them over the sloped roof just outside the window. Challenge accepted. The boots made quite a satisfying thump on the decking below. His balled-up socks followed the boots through the window. 

“What was that?” Danny came into the bathroom. His shirt was already half unbuttoned. 

“Boots. Outside.”

Danny looked down at Steve’s knobbly toes, the window, and back at Steve. He shrugged. His clothes rapidly followed Steve’s into the basket. 

Steve got into the shower, and with something close to a sigh of relief leaned into the shower of water that pummelled his head. He could feel the tension trickle out of his toes as he leaned forwards and let the pressure work down his neck. 

“Hmmmmm.” Danny plastered against his back, curling arms around his chest. 

They stood, Steve’s hands on the tiles on either side of the shower, bracing Danny’s weight against his back. 

“Man, we can’t sleep here,” Danny finally said, and peeled off Steve. 

“Noooo,” Steve protested. 

He liked the warmth. But Steve liked it more when Danny soaped up a sponge and set to work on his back. Delicious. Danny was methodical. Head, shoulders, arms, back, butt – with a little slap – thighs and calves. He was gentle over the bumps and bruises from what was a typical day at the office for them. 

Steve let the water play over his head and down his body as Danny gifted him with care. 

“Come on, Stinky.” Danny touched his ankle. 

Steve snorted, but obeyed, lifting his first foot to be meticulously scrubbed, and then the other. 

“Turn.” Danny kept rinsing and soaping as he worked 

“Bossy, Danno.” Steve turned, and Danny worked his way up the front. 

Kneeling on one knee, Danny slid his hands up Steve’s thighs. Steve liked the view. 

“Behave,” Danny said. He cupped Steve’s balls and cleaned with the same focus he had bestowed on the rest of Steve’s body. Danny ignored Steve’s rising interest, soaping Steve’s abdomen paying special attention to the troughs and waves. “I love your belly button.”

“Belly button?” Steve couldn’t help but repeat. 

“It’s cute.” Danny bestowed a kiss and moved on. 

Somehow it was more intimate when Danny cleaned his fingers. 

“I love you, you know,” Steve said, frankly. 

“I love you too, doofus.” Danny stretched up on his tiptoes and kissed Steve’s lips. Before Steve could reciprocate, Danny scrubbed the sponge over his face, laughing as he squashed Steve’s nose. 

“Stop it.” Steve muffled. He got the sponge out of Danny’s hands. “My turn.”

“Nope.” Danny snatched it back. “Watch.” 

“Watch?” Steve echoed. 

Danny made the mundanity of cleanliness a performance. Or perhaps it was the canvas. Steve wished he was the sponge, smoothing over Danny’s hirsute skin. Danny eyed him over his shoulder as he scrubbed his butt. Steve reached out. 

“Nope,” Danny chided. 

Steve gnashed his teeth. 

Finally, a slippery, soapy mess, he eeled into Steve’s arms, hugging against his chest. Steve angled them so the water rinsed them both. Danny rubbed on him like a giant, hairy facecloth. 

“I,” Steve managed, as Danny slid down his body. He planted his hands over Steve’s prominent hips. Danny’s lips were soft. Steve’s toes curled as Danny gifted kisses along the crease of his groin, heading towards his goal. 

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” Danny said. 

“Really?” Steve squeaked, although he wouldn’t admit that to anyone on the planet, as Danny finally, thankfully, mouthed his cock.

Danny set to work, humming as he indulged his senses. Reaching up, Steve grabbed the shower head for support, arching his back to give Danny all the scope he needed. Danny deep throated, and Steve’s eyes rolled back as he pulsed. Danny sucked him down, still humming happily. Steve didn’t know how that was possible, but it was probable that he was hallucinating. He kept upright only by holding onto the shower head. His legs felt like jelly. 

Opening his eyes, Steve looked down at Danny kneeling between his feet. Danny smiled satisfied, and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. 

Steve unpeeled his fingers, and reached down a hand for Danny. “My turn.” 

“Gonna have to be later.” Danny grinned. He cupped his flaccid cock – when Danny got with the programme, he got invested. The perks of being a sentinel were varied. 

Steve pulled Danny to his feet, and under the water spray to rinse off. He could stay here forever with Danny in his arms, and was content to do so. 

“Am gonna start pruning soon,” Danny said, eventually, a little forlornly. He kissed that little pulse point on Steve’s throat that he liked so much, and dipped in a little lick. “I’m surprised you didn’t complain about the water usage.” 

“There’s a time and a place for everything,” Steve said primly. 

“Hah.” Danny reached around him, and flicked off the shower. 

Steve wrapped Danny in the biggest, fluffiest towel and dried him with care, going with and then against the grain of his hair. Danny rocked easily from side to side under his strokes, enjoying the motion. Steve left Danny’s hair a disaster because he could never resist toying with Danny. 

“Infant.” Danny grabbed a fresh towel and retreated from the bathroom, snagging his spray-in conditioner. 

Steve dried off, putting in minimal effort. It was warm, he would finish drying off naturally. His hair could do its own thing. He padded after Danny, who was turning down the bed covers. The windows behind their bed were open, the curtains lightly wafting. 

Steve clambered straight over the mattress. He slapped off the bedside lamp. The moonlight was enough to see by, and Danny could tweak his sight to see as well as he could in daylight. Steve’s pillow was beckoning, and he was going to be asleep the millisecond he face-planted. He dropped. Sighed. Waited for sleep, but it wasn’t coming…. Steve flipped over onto his back. 

Danny stood at the side of the bed, carefully drawing a comb through his strands. 

“Bed,” Steve whined. 

“That’s not attractive.” Danny tossed the comb aside onto the dresser, and fell into bed. 

Steve gathered him in, settling him just so: Danny’s head on his shoulder and a hairy leg over his thighs. He rubbed his hand in lazy circles over Danny’s shoulder. 

“You could have dried off, you know,” Danny pointed out as he shifted a fraction left and then right, finding his perfect place. 

“I did… mostly.” 

The ceiling fan above their head turned idly. 

“Well, we caught Prof. Reeves’ killer,” Danny said. 

“True. Beck got away, though.” Steve sucked introspectively, drawing his cheeks in. “He knew you were a sentinel. How?”

“I can think of a couple of ways off the top of my head,” Danny mused. “5O were reported as investigating Prof. Reeves’ murder, so Beck could have assumed that we were next door. Two, he had a mole in HPD, which isn’t a stretch. He had been investigated, which he had to know about. All he needed was a flag on a casefile. It got activated: voila.” 

“Voila?” Steve echoed. 

“Yes, it’s French.” 

“I know that. I didn’t know that you did.” 

“I am a man of mysterious and dark depths.” Danny huffed. “We might be overthinking. That grenade also fucks up people in general. It gave him time to get away, sentinel or not. And stopped us from getting into his garage before it exploded, and turned into crispy back ribs.”

“Thanks for that image, Danny.” Steve scrubbed his bristly chin across the top of Danny’s damp head, mussing up the strands. 

“Stop it,” Danny whined. 

“Do you think that was the reason for the sonic grenade?” Steve continued. 

“Dunno,” Danny said succinctly. “But if he thought that we were next door why did he let the Kapu come around?”

Steve kissed Danny’s crown. He did so enjoy Danny’s thought processes. 

“So, the guy wasn’t actually aware that he was under surveillance,” Danny decided. “Otherwise, yeah, he would have gone and had the meeting somewhere else. But he had put out back up – the guy in the tree – ‘cos he’s a suspicious bastard. And quick thinking.” 

“He abandoned the sniper without a backwards glance.” Steve thought that that said everything he wanted to know about Beck. 

Danny huffed a gusty breath over Steve’s chest, making his sparse chest hair prickle. 

“When you went back to the office, did you get a hit on the dead guy?” Danny asked. 

Steve had set Toast straight on identifying the sniper. 

“Facial recognition didn’t pull anything off the known databases. His fingertips were scrubbed.”

“Scrubbed?”

“Surgically peeled,” Steve explained. 

“So, he’s an assassin?” Danny curled a little tighter in Steve’s hold, discomforted by even the thought of his fingers being treated in such a harsh manner. 

“Probably a mob enforcer,” Steve said. “But Max will find out about him, even if he has to pull out isotopic bone analysis tools. Guy was white, though. Pale white -- barely even a freckle. He’s a visitor to the islands. Recently arrived.” 

“It gives us an avenue to investigate.” Danny yawned.

“But not overnight.” Steve thumped his head back down on the pillow. He had HPD on alert, a warrant had been issued, and routes, both authorised and unofficial, off the island were regularly and heavily surveilled. There were other ways off the island and to the Free States but they were few and far between, and difficult to secure. Steve had surreptitiously contacted his broker, but he had to balance his family’s safety against finding Beck. Ibrahim did not, however, generally deal with common or garden criminals, preferring to deal with wainscotters. 

“We got the murderer,” Danny repeated. 

“True,” Steve could only say. The kid’s life was over. Maybe he was a volatile kid who would have gone on to murder more people, and they had succeeded in putting him away, but at this point it was only a tragedy. Regardless, it didn’t bring back a quiet, humble man who liked to read and teach, and everyone described as kind. 

“Yeah, and that was frustrating as fuck,” Danny grumbled. “Stupid. I hate cases like this.”

Steve kissed the top of his head, soothingly. Danny muttered under his breath and snuggled down a little more. 

“Tell me a story,” Danny demanded peevishly. 

Steve lifted his head off the pillow and stared at Danny’s thinning spot on the top of his head. 

“A story?” he asked disbelievingly. 

“Yeah, about the Little Prince. I had a look in your cabinets while you were sitting on the edge of the bath contemplating, but I couldn’t see it.”

“You had a look in my grandfather’s book cabinets,” Steve repeated. He said stupidly, “they’re locked.”

“Those thin paisley curtains wouldn’t even stop a mundane reading the – what do you call them? – book edges.”

“Spines,” Steve could only say. And Danny was wrong. It would take a sentinel to read through the weave of the fabric. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Danny grunted and flipped round in Steve’s hold. He wriggled up so his head was on Steve’s pillow. “I am a detective. You’ve been as prickly as a porcupine since picking up Reeves’ book. I know you like this shit. You made me watch Battlestar Galatica. But in the last forty-eight hours it’s become really clear that you really like this shit. Which is weird since near as I know, you normally just read car maintenance manuals and text books.”

Steve looked deep into Danny’s pale blue eyes trying, but not wanting to know, what he was thinking. 

“Oh, Steve.” Danny cupped Steve’s cheek. His broad, stubby fingers stroking carefully. “It’s okay. I don’t get it. But it is okay.”

“It was more my grandfather’s thing,” Steve eventually said, bathing in Danny’s acceptance; he had such a big heart. “He taught me to read with his books. They’re imaginative and… better than other genres. But I’ve read every book in grandfather’s collection more than once. It’s not like you can get new ones. No one publishes books glorifying aberrant behaviour. And I get why.”

“What?” Danny’s squinted at him. 

“You don’t get it.” Steve said. “Science fiction and fantasy is reviled, made disgusting and infantile for a reason. It’s government-sanctioned censorship. The books, the comics, even the few movies and television programmes all have a common theme _reach for the stars_. Sometimes that’s literal, like that book that Prof. Reeves was reading. Sometimes it’s metaphorical. But they are about the other, the disenfranchised, the weird, people finding their own way, and succeeding.” 

Danny’s processing face was a picture of confusion. 

“Danny, we’re here as sentinel and guide because of this ‘stuff’.” Steve laughed without humour. “Do you honestly think fifteen-year-old me decided to go against the machine of Sentinel Central and decades of indoctrination without a little exposure to alternative thinking?” 

“Jesus,” Danny could only say. 

“Yes, Danny, we’re here because of Starbuck and Apollo or more accurately, the Fremen of Arrakis.”

“I hate myself, so much.”

“Why?”

“That tv series was so bad, and I have to be thankful for it.”

“I guess we’ll have to find one that you like,” Steve laughed lightly. The kids at the university might have some material, and it was fairly obvious that Max was also a proponent of speculative fiction. “I think your dad will have some ideas.”

“That should be a fun conversation,” Danny said. “Maybe he’ll have tapes of that Startrekking thing?” 

“I’ll have to hook up the VHS.” Steve was pretty sure that Danny’s beloved dad had some contraband. They would also have to figure out how Danny’s parents could visit, since it had proven impossible to get a permit since their first and last visit. 

“But first.” Danny snuggled back into his favourite position, “Little Prince. I’m guessing you don’t need the book.” 

“No.” Steve licked his lips. The story was more George’s speed than Danny’s, he figured. George would only be able to sit still for about half of the first chapter. And Steve would have to re-read the story every night until he was ten. 

“Come on,” Danny prodded. He shifted, getting comfortable. 

“ _Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primæval forest_ ,” Steve began. He didn’t know the story verbatim, but he could remember the general gist and the many quotable elements. The trick was remembering them in order as the exhaustion of a long few days was finally winning the battle. He glossed over the next bit of the story, but got the essence out. 

Danny stroked his hand up and down Steve’s thigh, rhythmically and soothingly. On the cusp of sleep, Steve was losing track of the words. 

“ _But he would always answer_ ,” Steve continued, “ _‘That’s a hat.’ Then I wouldn’t talk about boa constrictors or jungles or stars. I would put myself on his level and talk about bridge and golf and politics and neckties. And my grown-up was glad to know such a reasonable person._ ”

“Kinda deep. Very deep,” Danny summarised as Steve paused to consider the next part. “I have no clue what that means, though.” 

Steve yawned around the next words. He stretched into the yawn and closed his eyes. 

“Hmmmm,” Danny hummed, lulling. 

There were no more words. On the final trailing edge of wakefulness, Steve thought that tonight might be steeped in dreams of the Little Prince and the fox. _‘Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. . . . It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important. . . . People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said, “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose…’_

“Hush, sleep,” Danny soothed. 

A kiss brushed Steve’s temple. He almost missed Danny’s whispered words as he succumbed to sleep. 

“I wish you didn’t have to hide yourself,” Danny said. “I love you as you are.”

**The end**


End file.
